The World Will Only Love You Dismembered
By Anindya Arif
I have never concerned myself with divinity.
Lofty concerns, as such,
Stay on the rim of the eyes
of virtuoso and priests.
I have only known this existence,
And have only cared for you.
I have always believed my life to be meaningless
but you paint it in a way that just
Happens to look like a picture
That has meaning.
All I know about love
I have known from the blood-filled sink in your blue room.
And from the rushed dream,
You unsheathed on your bathroom wall
of us looking directly at the sun at its zenith.
We might never get there,
Yet, you can still take
Every straggly ten-cent word I have written
For//about you and fill the small room
You have locked yourself in that made you believe
The world will only love you dismembered.
When you hold me against your repository of grief
When you wear your trauma as a heirloom around your waist.
And again and again, how you find me
In quiet rooms, where I can scream how I love you.
The same rooms where we have jabbed knives,
And atoned for our love being so violent.
