On Love and Dishes.

I love you
I do
I love you in spite of tears of scorn and rage and hate and history and irony and upset and sarcasm and pain.

I love you
In spite of pierced lips
And torn pages
And refusing to play the piano

I love you

I love you all over the scrawled pages of my purple journal where I sign my name in abundant letters and curse when I want to and talk in excruciating embellishment with an English accent because it is my journal and goddammit if I won't write what I want to.

I love you endlessly
And purposelessly
And cruelly
And stained.

I love you like blood.
Like thistles.

Like gold in an abandoned mine shaft the miners left there as a lesson.

I love you like water spilling out of an overfilled cup
And thirsty hands catching it and pressing it to parched lips.

I love you underwater and over bridges and surfing over shark-infested waters:
soup with fins.

I love you overboard
And under railings
And sliding through mud-soaked fields on my belly like a crisp slick salamander -

I love you
In all the seasons
And holding candles on Christmas Eve
And steaming breath singing and mugs of hot chocolate
And the way spit drips from a flute on the coldest day of marching band season and pouring salt in ulcers so you can still make music...

I love you dirty.
Down deep in the sheets and with rug burn on the floor and embarrassing mattresses...

I love you clean
Like dishes in the sink I run my hands over with soapy water and drain you down like thick potato scraps and egg peelings and vegetable shavings -

- I love you shamelessly, foolishly, insanely, tirelessly -

 - I love you until you cease to exist;
Until the thought of you is more real than the real you and if I heard your voice I wouldn't know who was speaking because the voice in my mind has become so kind or so hateful that I don't know what exists in the middle and
I love you
Wanting
Wanting to know,
Wanting to see,
Wanting you to see me,
I love you still
And quiet
And (roaring) like the ocean in a hurricane.

i love you (wind)
i love you (noise)
i love you (you/me; me/you; me)
(you).