Love Like Goths by Major Jackson

When you are in love, your blood brightens the veins

Love Like Goths

by Major Jackson

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When you are in love, the laundry goes unwashed 
and mail collects like mold in a mailbox by the road. 
Wallpaper unglues and slowly peels away like meaning from a word. 
You are absorbed into the great unknown and the living 
blacken their mirrors darkening a way to the land of Dis. 
Your possessions, your favorite saltshaker, your albums, 
your lambskin coat with the bone ivory toggles, 
all stand like orphans in a corner of an emptied house 
then find new homes where they occasionally recall the touch 
of your fingers. Thunder is a faint memory. 
When you are in love you ignore cutoff notices 
and appeals to donate to PETA. 
When you are in love, your blood brightens the veins 
of an elderly man in Pasadena, who himself will
someday become a donor, and in this way your blood 
will someday course through a child in Oaxaca. 
When you are in love, dark wave compositions 
charge the ears of those sitting solemnly at your funeral.
When you are in love, your works are a luxury to your family
who will study how you breathed between sips of oolong tea. 
When you are in love, you gleam brighter than ever before.

First published in ONLY POEMS (September, 2023)