Picaroon Poetry - Issue #1 - March 2016

Re: “Find what you love and let it kill
you.”
Orooj-e-Zafar
I will find what I love
and let it play hopscotch on the midline cliffs
of my vertebrae; I will let it turn around
to my front and slide down my tailbone
so it has lived like a child
before it sheds memories in the shape
of victories feeling like anything but.
I will find what I love and let it decide
how long her braids must fall and where
his ankles need to be fastened to his sneakers;
I can wait till both their rabbit ears
find their looping better halves.
I will find what I love and let it breathe
before I can admit the full deficit of my proprioception
and the terms I made with it. I will let it live,
expel,
return
and then surrender
just until its admission leaks onto its lying lips,
“I have wanted to end you,” as if the shock
will shift my tectonic paradigm.
I will roll pebbles onto my back for it and whisper,
before the waves wax and wane to their end:
“Loving is consuming in the way fire makes
bodies fly. Watch how you made me soar,
watch how we have lived,
watch how we have grown,
and let go.”