When you love someone
That came to you disguised in wholeness,
You will be surprised by the pieces of them
That break on your teeth.
Their blood will drip down your chin.
You will taste the bitter copper and discover
You have to find a different way to love them.
They can't be chewed and swallowed,
Made into nourishment to satisfy
The lust that rises from your spine.

She's been touched before,
Felt a similar burn beneath finger tips.
You have to love soft enough,
Cautious enough not to duplicate scars,
Hard enough to convince her she's not still a victim.
You'll want to always ask permission
To make up for all the men who didn't,
For the man who turned her hymen into a causality
Of his inferiority and ungodly aggression,
The man who turned her whimper into a repugnant melody,
All the men who fucked their way into your daydreams about her.

And you’ll start to wonder
If they fucked their way into your home.
They will have already invaded your conversation.
You will have watched her dissolve
Whenever she speaks of the roughness of men.
Watch her skin sear at the thought
Of those that accused her of lying
About all the fire that made battle between her legs.
You’ll hate her history enough to want to hate her too,
So you want have to love the black parts of her.

The parts that were scared of accepting you
When you kept throwing yourself whole,
The parts that kept her back to the wall,
The parts that won’t let you touch that part,
The parts that keep her part drunk and part high
So she can only see parts of her bruises.
And part of you will wish you got to her first
Before she was more pile than woman,
Before she half hated every piece of herself
That let those men inside her,
But it’s too late.

You will have already given pieces of yourself to repair her.
There isn’t much of you anywhere.
You will have given her half your pulse.
Your heart will beat half irregular for her.
You won’t be sure which scars are yours
And which ones you share.
You will have no other choice but to love all the parts that she can’t,
To love her in all her blackness.
By then you will need her in order to feel whole.
Despite all the pieces she’s fall into,
You need her, so you stay.

And every day, you’re terrified.
You’ve never been here before,
In a place so hostile,
So steaming fresh, flesh wound,
And she’s never been here either.
Everything soft and good is foreign.
You will always be part aftermath and unexpected.
There will be days when she will doubt all the love you have
Because of all the love that’s been siphoned from her hips.
And there will be days when you look at her naked
And wonder if you are just like those men
Because your hands and their hands
Have traveled the same skin,
And there will be days when you hate yourself for it.
And those moments
Will be the darkest.

And there will always be darkness
Where sun has been back porch drunk dead ripped from a person.
There will be holes
Where light should be.
You will never give up trying to replace it.
You will cherish the sun that she has left
To make morning with her
Every night.