Please Keep Loving Me

Please Keep Loving Me.


please keep loving me,
when thought of losing
what we are
feels like death's cold breath
on the backs of our necks.

please keep loving me
when it does not come
so naturally.

even when it feels more like work than
like play.

please,
keep loving me.

please keep loving me
when I scratch open
our old wounds
and when our wild hearts
tug at the chains
which hold them home.

please keep loving me.

when your eye wanders
more often than it watches over me,
and when your body lusts for new
adventures.

if ever the shadow you cast
falls on and colors a darker shade
the pillows and the blankets
and the body
of another,
lying
in a place
more like the scene of a terrible crime
than a home,
even then,
especially then…

please keep loving me.

and when old faults are
far behind,
let's laugh at the day we are riding.

let's hold the brightest of hopes
for tomorrow
and the day after that.

when we make copies of ourselves
and we spend decades
mixing in the best ingredients
we each have to offer up-

please keep loving me.

one day those kids will move away,
to search for love
like what their parents had.

in times when we are the envy of friends
for our perfect harmony,
when it's more true than they could know
and just as much
when that harmony is just a mirage
viewed from their desolate perspective.

when you're the boat
and I'm the sea
and we
refuse to flow
together,
while we wait for the safety
of high tide…

in some of the last years
when the fading blue blotches
of old tattoos
are joined
by the brown spots of age
marking the soft,
crinkled, see-through skin
on our faces and our hands.

when the house we bought
with the money we earned
selling off our youth,
starts to fall apart.

when our floorboards,
our walls give way to wind
and hallways creak and shiver,
when the roof begins
to let in rain...

when the sons and daughters
come home for holidays and
bring us pamphlets,
meant to coax us from the comfort of our home.

when they take us away
to roll around in chair parades,
shuffle around on canes,
wait out the twilight
spent in buffet lines,
where we can die of natural causes
and be scooped off the floor by
trained strangers.

and when our sight begins to fail
I hope we still see
the same reasons
we spent the only life we had
together.

when all of this truth
comes to be,
please…

please

keep loving me.