I.
Emerson says our goodness needs edge,
and she is all sharp and torn
like the pages from your dog-eared books
with the scribbles in the margins.
She loves too deeply,
will bury herself beneath your bones
and she will break them
when she comes to life again.

II.
She reads Bukowski to me in the dark
and asks how you can love somebody
into madness
and it takes half a bottle and three days
until I’m whispering,
“I know, I know.”
She tells me about the ones before me
that declared their love
between clenched teeth.
Somehow, she doesn’t flinch.

III.
We sit cross­-legged on a picnic blanket, read Plath.
I ask her what it’s like to love so greatly,
to put up with kisses that are all teeth and no substance,
and when she does not answer me from the sky
I find the answer beneath her bruised rib cage.

IV.
She hands me a copy of On the Road
and suddenly that’s where we are.
“The ghosts in the floorboards
won’t keep me awake anymore,”
she says.
I do not understand how ghosts
can make homes out of houses,
but the holes in the drywall
and broken bottles in the hall
tell me the things that haunt
her sleep are still alive.

V.
Thoreau says, “Give me truth,”
and the most honest thing
I have ever known
is in front of me in a white dress,
blood dripping from her mouth
like holy water.
She’s the confessional
where my sins go die,
touches my lips like
congregational wine
and brings me to my
knees on Sundays.
She is not a saint,
but nothing has ever
felt so pure.

VI.
Finally, we move to Shakespeare,
never once questioning why
they chose to die for love,
but as we sit on a rooftop
with our feet dangling,
we know,
and suddenly,
we are the ones who are screaming.