"Maps", Sharlene Teo

[bardachd]

This is not a love poem.
Love cannot be so deliberate,
plotting itself into a sky-
scraper, sharp valley, clean
comet. It should have no grid
in the bold and lonely atlas
of everybody's alphabet.

This is not a love poem.
I want to bury you in houses,
bearings, constellations:
concentric paths that
hover about you like
a minor illness, cartoon
phantom. I want to distil
trite silence into a stone-
cold something so needed
and so new, you gulp it down
and it actually warms you.

This is not a love poem.
I'm just trying to chart a
stupid ailment. Symptom:
how my foolscap heart folds
itself into a plane and at
a mere mention, takes off
and will not stop leaving. Stops
or will not. But these are short
flights. Often, the harsh landing
crumples and shocks.
Backbone broken, wind-
tossed, love is somewhere
too far off. It doesn't matter.
What a state. Surely this
is the best kind of lost.