How We Love

HOW WE LOVE
by Laura Cresté

We love bad dogs the way we love bad men.
No woman in my family would admit this,
but it must be true or else why
would we keep bringing them home.

We love dogs who draw blood
without warning, men who kick in doors
and call us crazy. It’s not fantasy

about the power to change, that you can
love someone into kindness.
It’s a simple gospel of staying, gold ring
estate jewelry and trading for a new name.

We love like a sentence
that once given
cannot be rescinded.

In the blue glow of a crime show,
my aunt says, if that were my father
I would still love him
and visit him in prison.

A serial killer?* I prod, trying to distinguish
between crimes of bad impulse
and a real true joy in violence – ropes, knives.

Even then, she says.
Her tall, senile dog has scarred
two faces: nipped a woman’s
chin, and worse, snarled open

the delicate skin of her nephew’s brow,
requiring stitches, nearly
skewering the eye.

When explaining to my fiancé
how I was raised, I insist
on my own good sense,
claim to be different:

will not love what I cannot trust.
Yet when that dog, so tall
we called him The Horse,

approached me at eye level,
I did not turn from his clouded gaze
or black healthy gums
as he put his mouth to my cheek.

I’m not immune from wanting the rank
breath of the wild. I extend my face
soft with hope and expect to be spared.