I had never held love
but it held me;
hostage with a shotgun pointed at my knees.
Staring back and forth between its eyes
and the iron sights
I gave in to its many demands,
it was all I wanted–just to be wanted.
Thinking if I ever stopped giving
that it would leave
and I didn’t want to be alone again.
So I gave it all I had.
It left anyway,
leaving a trail of gunpowder perfume.
Looking down at the hole it blew straight through,
I have the audacity to ask myself
if perhaps they were in the right.
It came to my door a beautiful beggar.
It knocked with anxious hands of alabaster,
tiny things that seemed incapable of pulling a trigger
because of the way it nervously played
with its hair between their fingers.
I let it in and it took everything,
and I parted with those precious parts gladly;
hoping the very skin off my back
that they had peeled off
with those perfect little hands
would help see them through the winter.
All the parts in you that were broken
and in dire need of repair
will think this is what it means to love,
and you will have every right to fear it,
such as you perceive it.
Now the windows are closed,
and the doors are all locked
and we bark like mad dogs at anyone that knocks.
But what if I did all of that to me?
What if I always knew
what those hands were capable of
when they knocked on my door so long ago?
Maybe I was so utterly about the business
of destroying myself completely
that I took down the gates of my city,
begging to be sacked and plundered.
Cause honey, I am a masochist,
and there ain’t no fucking safe word.
I opened the door
so I could find a reason to keep it closed.
To preserve what remained of me,
in a fortress of my own making
that would become a mausoleum;
because the only things in life that do not grow
are dead things.
I did this to me.
So that I could show the world the wound
that the wind still whistles through
as inarguable proof,
This is what love does to you.
So we close our windows and lock our doors.
And bones break against our stone;
but it’s not us that hurts anymore.
We are wounded creatures wounding creatures.
Fulfilling our own prophecies,
and building safe and quite predictable futures.
They may have pulled the trigger
but I placed the gun in their hands,
walked up to the firing line
and showed them where to aim.
Cause back then, there was nothing
I was more in love with than my own pain.
– ian gallows ©