Daniel Meltz

More About Love

I got the message early on that love is
a risk and active which sounded like an
episode of The Fugitive so I wanted no
part of it although I went on dates like
the next guy and wrote poems after sex
about falling and fighting and rough
undressing. But you know it made no
sense, why I couldn’t be in love or be
in love and not feel anxious every minute
about the fragile love’s crumbling, this 
when I thought of love as risk only, as 
some kind of boobytrapped frog
pond—which it is—but if you stick with 
it, like sticking with a stickshift (you stall
and stall until you finally feel the gears
give), then, maybe then, after hitting
and screaming, after feeling completely
stupid and crass for making demands and
forgetting to think, you’re driving.

Daniel Meltz is a retired Google technical writer and teacher of Deaf young people, with a B.A. from Columbia (no honors); his first book of poems It Wasn’t Easy to Reach You and his first novel Rabbis of the Garden State were both published a couple of minutes ago.