Ghazal: what love takes
BY JULIET P. HOWARD
I’m sleeping as I write this; you’re standing over me crying
while Ella belts out: No, no they can’t take that away from me
If this is all I can get, your hand on my shoulder in the dream,
lips warm against my neck, I’ll take that
The alarm clock becomes enemy; I press snooze every few minutes,
search for you and finally press stop when I can’t take it any more
Please don’t mistake this for a love poem – I stopped writing those
damn things once you left; anyhow, that last poem I wrote: you wouldn’t take it
I call my mama and ask her how she lived all those decades
knowing her lover would never fully be hers and she said: chile, you just take it
Wake up! Rewind routine daily, tuck kids in, cook dinner work round the clock,
leave patience on the dining room table while making breakfast, and the kids take it
As I wake from the dream, your tears fall from my eyes and I ask myself:
J why do you complicate love? Why can’t you just take it?
I’m sleeping as I write this; you’re standing over me crying
while Ella belts out: No, no they can’t take that away from me
If this is all I can get, your hand on my shoulder in the dream,
lips warm against my neck, I’ll take that
The alarm clock becomes enemy; I press snooze every few minutes,
search for you and finally press stop when I can’t take it any more
Please don’t mistake this for a love poem – I stopped writing those
damn things once you left; anyhow, that last poem I wrote: you wouldn’t take it
I call my mama and ask her how she lived all those decades
knowing her lover would never fully be hers and she said: chile, you just take it
Wake up! Rewind routine daily, tuck kids in, cook dinner work round the clock,
leave patience on the dining room table while making breakfast, and the kids take it
As I wake from the dream, your tears fall from my eyes and I ask myself:
J why do you complicate love? Why can’t you just take it?
JULIET P. HOWARD is a poet, lawyer, Cave Canem fellow, and native New Yorker. She was a finalist in the Astraea Lesbian Writer’s Fund 2009-2010 poetry category and recipient of a Soul Mountain Retreat writing residency. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Connotation Press, TORCH, Queer Convention: A Chapbook of Fierce, Cave Canem Anthology XII: Poems 2008-2009, Cave Canem XI 2007 Anthology, and The Portable Lower East Side (Queer City). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The City College of New York, as well as a BA from Barnard College and a JD from Brooklyn Law School.