Love Laws

by Sara Brielle

There is a border, guarded
by greed. Eyes translucent
like a drained heart, flaking
with soul like rapture.

It’s terror sustains on raw
blood, letting lovers pass,
collecting conformity
like rent, toll money.

Care has an oppressive
rhetoric, housed in
buildings with chipped
paint and smells of bleach.

Fenced in residencies with
cutthroat conventions.
There are laws of love and
a penance for trespass.

It is the border, manned by
practiced, dehydrated fear,
which from the crevices
birthed me.

Precarious and reckless,
I run boundaries like
red lights. Heart threaded
to my shirt sleeve.

Trench where friends become
lovers and mentors, mothers,
the ground […]