How I Stopped Bombing and Learned to Love the Worry by Francis de Lima

"maybe there are bombs in the world that aren’t metaphors that fall on hospitals."

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How I Stopped Bombing and Learned to Love the Worry

by Francis de Lima

Because the book you made
was not the sum of enough tears
but a bomb I want to be a bomb
so bad but I’m a grocery list instead
with 17 pounds on my bank account
do I have to have money for mascara
to be considered a monarch butterfly?
I promise I too have migrated across
the Great Lakes like the man you love
might migrate across your mouth
filling it with salt - and I love the taste of a man
but you’re not supposed to say it so I poured over
vinegar instead like I was in Hurt Locker
‍trying to cut the right wire trying to
stop the bomb the barrage the artillery the
metaphor and maybe the centre of the bomb
wasn’t shrapnel but a child alternatingly mistaken
for a boy and a girl who refuses to elaborate or
maybe there are bombs in the world that aren’t metaphors that fall on hospitals.

And here in the background hum of empire
I think I’m the bomb that I’m hot shit I’m the
bees fucking knees being fucked on my
knees and it’s all quite funny isn’t it - the tab on your
tongue becoming an alligator when you said woman
and meant something that gets shot out of a gun
and meant you and when you didn’t answer
a text for over a week my heart fluttered to you as a monarch
butterfly look mom I can repeat a metaphor and I cleaned your apartment
which was like after a bomb see mom the English degree paid off and I
tried to make you sleep jaw wired shut on six
pills of Concerta and your heart wasn’t
a butterfly but an engine with a missed oil change shitting blood shitting poetry and
slurring over your triple vodka lemonade that
helped you sleep you said if you want to get into this you’ve
got to let go of definition and I did
three years later somewhere in North Greenwich I came
looking at the London skyline and I finally realised the bomb
wasn’t a heavy thing lodged in your diaphragm
but this here skyline, unfolding

First published in ONLY POEMS, March 2024.