This Kind of Love
Is a foot-in-the-mouth my baby making contact
amid palm and cheek stinging somewhere between
the safety of skin and uh-oh pink? Any chance to mend
a relationship on a collision course towards more
episodes of a generational ouroboros family system?
A hand to heal, to cover up pain, and make it feel real?
If this is the kind of love that the old folks used to warn me about,
man, I'm in trouble, I'm in real big trouble…
If you’ve ever heard the quip of failed love, it’d be found
in the spit-lisp, revved up lips of conversations first heard
from home. While playing PS3 or watching tv their arguments
on repeat, memorized into verse watching people thrash and
laugh the same way they do off screen because they’ve seen
it in their homes and did the same thing you did too. To sense
safety in the movement of pixels ‘til the two become too close
and the hairs on your arm can’t stand the pull of its static.
If this is the kind of love that the old folks used to warn me about,
man, I'm in trouble, I'm in real big trouble…
If a body crashes to the floor and no one’s around to
witness it, can it still be called trauma? Does that same body
make a sound when it holds another by its hand like nothing
ever happened? My baby is the cleanest answer, quick and
valid, more polished than a bruise. More homespun than
I love you. And that’s why they never leave. So stay.
If this is the kind of love that the old folks used to warn me about,
man, I'm in trouble, I'm in real big trouble…
*The refrain comes from Wyclef Jean’s 2000 song, 911 ft. Mary J. Blige
