This Is My Knowledge

I have caught up against something that catches at my throat,
little daggers of knives and jagged edges where my thoughts roam;
I thought I knew this ground.
It was a road or a path or a well-worn finger-brushed against you lips.
It was a kiss in the dark and a moment of heartache.

You took me somewhere beautiful,
where I didn’t understand the sunlight or the way the breeze blew,
you took me somewhere beautiful,
and in the aftermath of beauty I lie awake at night,
uncertain of meaning.

You took me somewhere beautiful,
and my heart burns with it like a fire never to go out,
and if I could turn my face up to yours,
if I could smile at you and smile at you...

would you know?

I have misconceptions that course through my body,
fine veins of corruption in ignorance.
I have mistakes like thumb-tacks on my wall.
Like paper-napkins in the breeze.
I have love like flickering fireflies,
caught up and caught up and caught up.

But I don’t die.

I have half a moment to ponder.
A lifetime, a world.

You took me up in arms like catching grace.
I owe my heart-strings vibration on the whisper of your breath.
I owe the like of love,
the want and lust and found of love.

You don’t really know, do you?
Not really there against the blue sky and the white flower petals,
not really I think, at all.
And I could turn my face up against your chest and
I could smile sweetly up against your shirt.
I could cry endlessly up against your heartbeat;

for love,
in that laying way across the carpet,
in that moon-lit basking glow held by open curtains,
I realized I really don’t know,
I don’t know what love is.

And perhaps, I never will find a way to define it.

But if I could smile at you and smile at you,
would you know it, there in my eyes,
there in my beating blood and thought;
This is my love, and it is what I know.