How To Love

How to

Love

The words did not fit

Like the milk curled at the lip of cup

Of tea I sipped on the library steps

Doors closed but lights within

It was a question asked enough

Over the aisles, the lone attendant

Recommending the self-help corner

The same who types the input

‘Love

How To’

Into the computer

Nothing other

Than the occasional volume

With well-thumbed spine

Comes up

A saga of shame or the old page-turner

I know I’ll bring myself to find

And see the coffee stains

On the inside cover

Another evening

Another life.

Over

Love

How to the concrete

A thigh can soften

Almost like submission

The steps form a sheet.

For the month is February

And the books promise passion

I wonder at each underlined section

Folded corers, scored crease.

For paper is worn by the fingers

In their old kind of confession

The nail-marks like a shudder

The pale parts like a brine

Of tears that have fallen

From some man or woman

How to

Love, find, focus, see

First given by confession

Then written in lines

How to

Love

Like a library broken

I know the stories

Yet still wait for the keys.