Lilah Clay
You Are Eighteen
We love to love the artist long after he fails.
We invest in brokenness
after it has cut off its ear
and shred
the mask
to pierce canvas
or field in sunflowers or song.
We love to love the blade
of grass after it has proven itself.
Who witnesses
the alchemizing of
light from mud?
Who will say,
This dying suits you.
Write it down.
When the eyelids are thick
as slugs from crying,
and you claw at the carpet
for a room beneath the room.
The locked one Rilke says
you are supposed to love
like the questions themselves.
Though the questions are unloveable.
We love to love the struggle
after it has a platform
and has made us a lot of money.
Write it down.
The row of houseplants
broiled in morning sun
on windowsill,
dropping jungle of shade
to translucent
shower curtain.
Showing you a room
where they can live with their shadow.
Pull the rubber plug
from clawfoot tub and try
to live with yours.
Write it down.
Then give boyfriend the journal.
Of pain
and tenderness,
and mutilation blood.
Your subconscious evicting
the tide
of spirochetes
as if to say— Here,
the proof is
here.
We love to love the teenager
who wails into the pot of water,
post-break up, then pours it over
bleeding heart flower under the porch stairs.
Because even some part of us
used to know how to nourish
the self outside of us, in plant form.
Before we failed.
