I never really told you how much you meant to me; and you’re probably completely unaware of the impact you had in my life. There are a lot of things to blame for that, all have something to do with myself and my own personal baggage. But I’m being honest now.
You caught my attention with your lace stockings, short skirts, and crop tops on sweaty summer days; or your black jeans and collard button up shirts, lingering with traces of cologne. Your whiskey soaked voice and honey eyes put me in a trance. When I couldn’t bear to look at myself in the mirror, you let me look at you instead.
I don’t blame you if you don’t remember a lot of these moments, it wasn’t often I could be myself when I was sober. So if you need a reminder, you and I shared drunken and sloppy kisses in our friend’s bathtubs, we whispered declarations of love on your bed and made everlasting promises in the backseat of your mom’s car. I washed the bloodstains from your jeans, disinfected the cuts on your knees, and cleaned the remnants of a bad night from your lips. In these small, shared moments together, you saved me.
You gave me so much, and I never wanted to stop taking. You gave me my first kiss, my first good orgasm (and my first fake orgasm), my first love, and of course my first heartbreak. You planted seeds in my garden and watered them until I grew too big; if people try to unearth me, all they’ll taste is your rainwater in my roots. You taught me to love myself, and that it was okay if I didn’t sometimes — you’d love me enough for the both of us. Thank you for always giving this degenerate a home.
She doesn’t know why you don’t write about love.
You don’t write about love for the very same reason you refuse to learn how to roller skate. You dislike the idea of introducing anything that requires hurting yourself repeatedly before you get good at it.
For My Wife, from “How Poetry Saved My Life”
by Amber Dawn
(via ahustlersmemoir)
