It Was Only You

I tempered raw honesty

and hurt with white teeth,

slick with smile,

and watched as all the world

was fooled into loving me.

But nobody knows what to do

with raw honesty's raw wounds,

never healing, edge-to-edge, but

growing wider, pulsing truth.

The lie of my smile, and cherry picked

life I plastered, a sweet but temporary

salve, a way to bring sense to my senseless

pain.

But it was only You, the soft tender

voice in the bitter angry dark, not salt,

but a soothing consequence, an ointment

that healed my heart and made me love again.