What is This Thing Called Love?*

8/1

*a conversation with Kim Addonizio's book of Poetry, What is This Thing Called Love?

So what, what is this thing called love?
It's a subtle ache that begins in your chest,
beginning with the heart, making its journey through
the avenues and highways of your inner cracks
and crevices,

Up through the aorta, up, down, and out, spilling
everywhere, creeping slowly, crawling along
the arteries, along the walls of every vessel,
warring with blood cells and plasma and blocking them
from reaching your limbs and extremities,

the prickling sensations beginning to spread toward
the shoulders and down the arms,
succeeded by shortness of breath as you feel the heart
pound harder through your ribs, trying to
outrace the painful encroachment of what may
very well be an enemy invasion,
as it reaches the tips of your fingers

and all you can do is move, reaching for
something, anything, whatever's within reach, but only
that one person will do, the person whose magnets
of the body have called to yours, whose stamp is on
your wrist and forehead, consigned to a fate akin
to death as you can't get away except through the
ripping of bones and skin to get it out of you.

It is this ache that clutches the lonely, holding themselves,
holding pillows, holding bottles, holding vices,
and it is this pain, this ache, that grips me now,
as I reach for you in your absence, and the
air I grab is set on fire by the memory of your presence,
and only your body, your small frame that
fit so neatly into mine
can calm or quell this burning,

and only the coolness of your lips that wouldn't leave my side
all those nights is the antidote for the crazed cleaving
of this tired, tired soul.