Cross Our Dirty Fingers, poetry by Kerri Caldwell at Spillwords.com
Flora Westbrook

Cross Our Dirty Fingers

Cross Our Dirty Fingers

written by: Kerri Caldwell

@KerriCaldwell19

 

Do you have any idea how love works?
First, we must make the beast beautiful
I’ve grown sick trying to love who I am
Always starting my sentences without knowing how they’ll end
the expression of an unformed thought the tether to my true self
No one knows who I am, but I know who I can be

I harbor a relentless wish to be something to others
watching the sand pile up on the wrong side of the hourglass
spending days that don’t add up and growing murderous with disappointment
Can you really win if you’ve got nothing left to lose?
Just because things could’ve been different doesn’t mean they’d be better

Sometimes we put our hearts in the wrong places
We believe in love wholeheartedly without understanding
This – this is the price of feeling
It’s an odd place to be
with these bouts of affection in the folds of the night

Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you?

We broke the rules slowly, then all at once
suspended inside a love the world won’t acknowledge
Times are changing, but people’s minds are slow to keep up
The scrapes on our knees will tell you where we’ve been
and where we have bled
I’ll hold your hand with good intentions
and you’ll abandon logic for passion

You came to me like a midnight intervention
romanticized by a broken heart
You are something to me that nobody else is
A place where nothing happened until we happened

Sometimes there’s a heaviness from being loved by you
The awareness that I belong to you only as long as the world sees fit
despite your fierce affection
my passionate protection
our constant attraction

This is the art of living with a ticking heart
It smells like sweet decay – but you forget that decay can feed the bloom
It isn’t any less beautiful, I promise
So let’s cross our dirty fingers and thank the forces that knit us together
and hope they allow us to love
like poetry older than words

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