Like That by Kim Addonizio

We all want to be lit on fire & burned to ash...like that... xo

LIKE THAT

By Kim Addonizio

Love me like a wrong turn on a bad road late at night, 

with no moon and no town anywhere

and a large hungry animal moving heavily through the brush in the ditch.

Love me with a blindfold over your eyes and the sound of rusty water

blurting from the faucet in the kitchen, 

leaking down through the floorboards to hot cement. 

Do it without asking,

without wondering or thinking anything, while the machinery’s

shut down and the watchman’s slumped asleep before his small TV

showing the empty garage, the deserted hallways, 

while the thieves slice through the fence with steel clippers. 

Love me when you can’t find a decent restaurant open anywhere, 

when you’re alone in a glaring diner

with two nuns arguing in the back booth, when your eggs are greasy

and your hash browns underdone. 

Snick the buttons off the front of my dress

and toss them one by one into the pond where carp lurk just

beneath the surface,

their cold fins waving. 

Love me on the hood of a truck no one’s driven

in years, sunk to its fenders in weeds and dead sunflowers;

and in the lilies, your mouth on my white throat, 

while turtles drag their bellies through slick mud, 

through the footprints of coots and ducks.

Do it when no one’s looking, when the riots begin and the planes open up,

when the bus leaps the curb and the driver hits the brakes and the pedal sinks to the floor,

while someone hurls a plate against the wall and picks up another...

Love me like a freezing shot of vodka, like pure agave, love me

when you’re lonely, when we’re both too tired to speak, 

when you don’t believe in anything...

Listen, there isn’t anything, it doesn’t matter; lie down

with me and close your eyes, the road curves here, 

I’m cranking up the radio

and we’re going, 

we won’t turn back as long as you love me,

as long as you keep on doing it 

exactly like that.