I could write love poems.

I could press my hand up against a blank page
and trace it with a black permanent marker,
glue feathers and elbow macaroni inside of it.
The outline could be filled with metaphors
and memories of things like your hair,
comparing your eyes to the sky or the ocean.
I could find the shapes of your smiles
along the curves of my thumbs,
your warm lips tucked in around my wrist.
I could point out the imprints of your teeth
in the deep crevices of my palms,
the scarring where lust ripped out my fingernails.

I could write love poems.

I could strip myself naked and pour paint
on my breasts, my stomach, my legs and arms.
I could fling myself against a sheet,
leaving imprints of yellow nipples and orange buttocks.
I’d go at it for hours, furiously pressing flesh
against the canvas, and my strong artistic battle
would explain your breath against my shoulders,
the story of how you rushed yourself through me
and how it felt like a sand cave collapsing inside of me.
I could stand back and marvel
at the perfect way the mark my cheek left
conveys how I spent hours with the phone chord
twisted between my toes, giggling with my friend.

I could write love poems.

I could find myself with a cello between my legs
and rub my teeth against the strings, pluck it with my toes,
let my eyelashes move the bow back and forth
with no sense of rhythm or order. I could throw back my head
and howl a high C, scream a minor chord
as I smack the cool, polished wood beneath my palms.
I could compose a song with perfect lyrics
explaining the arguments and the way
you mistreated your baby, your broken promises,
and how your breath smells like cabbage and dry fish
in the morning after you spend a long night snoring.
I could strike a triad for myself in honor
of not shedding a tear when you erupted my heart
like a cold egg dropped too fast into boiling water.
I’d sing a chorale dedicated to the guy at the grocery store
who I found much more attractive than you
and just happened to wink at me a few times last week
as I examined bread on aisle six.

I could knit sweaters, sculpt Greek Goddesses,
perform a dance about all the bittersweetness you left me with.
I could bake cakes, mold pots out of clay,
perform in plays about how you are my destroyer but not my maker,
and I am not bitter, no. No, I am not lonely.
I am an artist, and I can take what scraps you left me,
what dirt you smeared across my flesh,
and grow flowers – a whole beautiful garden
where I will live forever under the Knowledge Tree,
an adamless Eve, pure and untouched and perfect.

Or I could write love poems.