The Smell of Love (and How I Go about Writing Poetry)

I want my love for you
To smell like an old book—
Where you can flip through the pages
Of my affections
And say, “Ah! Right here. Page 86:
You wiped a tear from my cheek,
And kissed me with more than
Just your lips.
That was the first time
You kissed me with your heart.”
Then you close the book
Of my affections
And inhale lightly
The smell of my love.
And you kiss me gently
With your heart.


I wrote this poem in February of 2018, and I remember that I wrote it within the span of ten minutes. That is the case of most of the poems I write: I find myself in a rush of sudden inspiration, and then I write it all out quickly, and then edit a couple words here and there, a few grammatical errors or place a comma or colon; then, after reading it two or three times, I say it's finished.

I have a bad habit of not wanting to touch poems after writing them; I feel that, even though they are 99% fictional, they are genuine in the moment, and to go back at a later time to edit them would be disingenuous—that it would be more of a lie. What I write in the moment is what it should always be, and to come back as a different person, even a day later, would be somewhat dishonest.

Perhaps I see the poems I write in the moment as candid, and to edit them later would be asking the words to pose for me, to fake a smile for my sake. If it happens to be smiling already, then that's wonderful. But if the poem comes out crying, or looking solemnly at a decaying barn, then that is wonderful all the same.

Naturally, poems can only be so organic: they are still filtered through rhythms, potential rhyme schemes, meters, and language itself. But to get the poem out all in one go, and edit within the same timeframe, feels to me to be the closest I can get to making a poem candid, true, and natural.

Perhaps, because of this, fiction can be just as true.