You are not the first
I have trusted,
not the first I have shown my scars,
telling the stories of each one,
ghost stories in the night.

The telling is no easier now
than when I began, perhaps even harder
as I reveal
each one in detail,

how deeply the knife cut,
how much I bled, and for how long,
and how long I lay,
sure I would die,
certain of it and still amazed
that I did not.

With each telling I expose
the vulnerable places,
the killing places,
as well as each thick scar,
the ugly shields that protect me.

That is my madness,
that I tell lovers and strangers alike just how to love
and precisely how to kill,
how to raise me like a flying Lazarus to the stars,
or how exactly how to wield the knife
and finish the work so nearly done by others,
and leave the choice
to them.

About this poem. 

Love, all love, is a dangerous place. Glorious, but vulnerable.

Tom