Dear P.
Someone will love you many will love
you many will brother you some of these
loves will bother you some will leave you
one might haunt you hunt you in your
sleep make you weep the tearless kind of
weep the kind of weep that drowns your
organs slowly there are little oars in your body
little boats grab onto them and row and row
someone will tell you no but you won’t know
he is right until you have already wrung your
own heart dry your hands dripping knives until
you have already reached your hands into his
body and put them through his heart love is
the only thing that is not an argument
Copyright © 2017 by Victoria Chang. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 29, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
“This poem is a part of a series of epistolary poems that are in my forthcoming book, Barbie Chang. I wrote these to my children, knowing that despite the wisdom that comes with my own aging, they will still have to make all the same mistakes (more or less) that I have made, which is a scary thought.”
—Victoria Chang
Victoria Chang
