Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance by Ada Limón

Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance

 

Sometimes, I think you get the worst

of me. The much-loved loose forest-green

sweatpants, the long bra-less days, hair

knotted and uncivilized, a shadowed brow

where the devilish thoughts do their hoofed

dance on the brain. I’d like to say this means

I love you, the stained white cotton T-shirt,

the tears, pistachio shells, the mess of orange

peels on my desk, but it’s different than that.

I move in this house with you, the way I move

in my mind, unencumbered by beauty’s cage.

I do like I do in the tall grass, more animal-me

than much else. I’m wrong, it is that I love you,

but it’s more that when you say it back, lights

out, a cold wind through curtains, for maybe

the first time in my life, I believe it.