Angus Beef Cheese Relish Mustard Onions & Heavy Words

My fourth finger left hand
Still carries a paler line,

But you are over for burgers
at dinner
with my parents, sisters, and family friends
anyway. They listen in rapt attention, adoring
every word out your mouth. Better yet
you of the conservative tendency, my
father loves the extra ribbing I will recieve 
for my politics. 

You came over for burgers
Despite that on our first date
heavy cumbersome words
Fell out of my better judgment, words like
“bourgeois” and “1992 welfare reform”
And “I have borderline personality disorder.”

But you came over for burgers
with cheese and mustard and relish
and my parents decided to not notice
bruises on my neck beneath my hairline
where you think I smell sweetest.

You came over for burgers
and did not split out of my house
faster than Pompeii’s horses
watching all the ash in the world rolling after them.

And those burgers were pretty damn delicious
though I didn’t think that was why you stayed,
just to make sure,

More heavy words larger sharper hotter than meteors
hurling down my self-esteem
like, “college dropout,”
“recovering drug addict,”

that the less I weigh
the less I often say,

that one-way streets make me break out in hives,

you will need to pick crab bits and pieces
out of the beach sand
for my all-consuming fear of crustaceans,

that twice I tried Virginia’s river
scuba diving for Ophelia,
somehow buoyed to the sky
floating down the Ouse.

The scariest thing I can imagine is
I will be wrong again,
pretty red heart split
inside my sparrow chest,
That you will fold my birch-bark
lilly skin into some attic of remembrance
where you will call me quaint, mewing softly.

But you came over for burgers and say
that it is what I do
and not what I have done
that matters more, no matter how damaged
I might believe myself to be.

"And besides, i love your eyes".

I breathe and
take another bite and
my mother sold Steven Tyler shampoo once.

We poured libations to the rock gods
one Angus beef burger at a time,
your hand over mine,
not leaving me at all.