<addonizio's "you don't know what love is">
2004-01-15.8:58 p.m.


you don't know what love is
Kim Addonizio


but you know how to raise it in me
like a dead girl winched up from a river. How to
wash off the sludge, the stench of our past.
How to start clean. This love even sits up
and blinks; amazed, she takes a few shaky steps.
Any day now she'll try to eat solid food. She'll want
to get into a fast car, one low to the ground, and drive
to some cinderblock shithole in the desert
where she can drink and get sick and then
dance in nothing but her underwear. You know 
where she's headed, you know she'll wake up 
with an ache she can't locate and no money
and a terrible thirst. So to hell
with your warm hands sliding inside my shirt
and your tongue down my throat 
like an oxygen tube. Cover me
in black plastic. Let the mourners through. 



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names are often sad