Disintegration

My favorite motorcycle jacket’s sleeves are falling off and the rotten stuffing is visible. The soles of my boots are worn. There are holes in my black purse.
Exterior is giving way to Interior:
the aging process of the things I love.
Love is a verb and like any, it means action. My things have been there- rubbing against other studded punk jackets, infused with skinhead sweat, dropped on bathroom floors to mingle with toilet paper and day-old gayboy cum. They have danced on platforms while my legs are running double time on some powder or another.
New things tell no tales.
My mother, every time I go home, looks at my ripped fishnets, dirty backpack, and duct tape shoes and asks me- don’t I love my belongings?
Of course. If I didn’t, they’d be stainless, whole, still sitting in a closet somewhere next to my graduation robes and the orange scarf she bought me in Turkey last summer.
You should respect your things, she says. She pronounces respect like a slap.
Respect leaves her lips fully capitalized, some word to pray to. Her vision of respect is not biking miles in the clothes, not doing minor construction in the clothes, not staying out days in the clothes, not doing drugs in the clothes, not having sex against the bathroom wall in the clothes.
But not me.
I promise, if I love you- I will wear you out. Take you on trips till dawn and sometimes you’ll have mysterious marks on your skin even if I don’t leave the house with you.
If I love you, you’ll disintegrate.
Exterior giving way to interior- till you’re inside out and we both can see what you’re made of: The Chinese girl you first said those three words to, who died that Halloween. All your exes, including the one you might get back together with. The pain from your tattoo and hood piercing. The pleasure. The exact synapses fired the first time I made you come. Your capoiera muscle, what’s left of it. Your tumor. You and your sisters secrets. That disappointed look reserved for friends who forget to be friends. The night after the club you don’t remember. And the morning after, naked, with him. Your mis-wired nerve endings which let you have orgasms from my massages. The piece of dinner you didn’t throw up when you were trying to make your last series of paintings.
All this will fall out of your seams.
I can’t be careful, I don’t know how.
When my mother tried to teach me, I stuck my fingers firmly in my ears and sang Green Day just loud enough to hear nothing.
I learned only this:
If I love you, you will disintegrate, exterior giving way to interior.
If you are a jacket or shoes or a purse- I will spend money to repair you. Take you to to a store that smells of polish, drop you off with a man behind a sewing machine.
If you are made of skin and bones, if you are human, I will not stop.
I will pull out your stuffing with glee, place it on the bed, treat it like a library. A museum. A sandbox. I will get lost in the stories of your insides, place your insides on a pedestal and charge others to visit, throw your insides in the air and get some in my eye. I will build castles from your insides.
If I love you, you will disintegrate.
If I love you, you will disintegrate.
Exterior giving way to interior until you’re inside out.