LOVE Poem: The Girl with a Tattooed Heart, by Steve Gerson

2:36 am.

“I want,” she wrote in her laptop journal,
her fingers pecking at the keyboard like
a bird seeking seeds. “I want sunshine.
I want robins, daffodils, parades with balloons,
a glass of red wine over a candlelit dinner.
I want to hold someone’s hand,” as ice
droplets froze on her bedroom window.

She picked up her handheld from the nightstand
to read his text, again. “This isn’t working, Jen.”
Four words after their eight months together. In the
second month, she said, “I think you’re the one, Jim.”
He smiled and nodded. At the fourth month, she said,
“I love you, Jim.” He smiled and nodded. At month seven,
she asked, “What can I do, Jim?” He shrugged and looked away.

She wondered why she wasn’t enough. She wondered how else
she could have made him happy, as she tugged at the bandage
covering her left forearm, her nails bitten and bloodied around
red cuticles. She pried one edge of the gauze up and pulled it from
the scabs of her newly inked arm, decorated with a heart and two initials,
J & J. Jen read his four-word text, again, then she turned off the
handheld and shut her laptop, the light extinguishing like a flower closing.

The ice on her window started to melt in rivulets like exclamation points.

2:47 am.