14 Lesbian Love Poems on Sapphic Romance

Not a red rose or a satin heart.
I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.
Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.
I am trying to be truthful.
Not a cute card or a kissogram.
I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.
Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

Coming together
it is easier to work
after our bodies
meet
paper and pen
neither care nor profit
whether we write or not
but as your body moves
under my hands
charged and waiting
we cut the leash
you create me against your thighs
hilly with images
moving through our word countries
my body
writes into your flesh
the poem
you make of me.

Touching you I catch midnight
as moon fires set in my throat
I love you flesh into blossom
I made you
and take you made
into me.

How do we come to be here next to each other
in the night
Where are the stars that show us to our love
inevitable
Outside the leaves flame usual in darkness
and the rain
falls cool and blessed on the holy flesh
the black men waiting on the corner for
a womanly mirage
I am amazed by peace
It is this possibility of you
asleep
and breathing in the quiet air

Since we’re not young, weeks have to do time
for years of missing each other. Yet only this odd warp
in time tells me we’re not young.
Did I ever walk the morning streets at twenty,
my limbs streaming with a purer joy?
did I lean from any window over the city
listening for the future
as I listen here with nerves tuned for your ring?
And you, you move toward me with the same tempo.
Your eyes are everlasting, the green spark
of the blue-eyed grass of early summer,
the green-blue wild cress washed by the spring.
At twenty, yes: we thought we’d live forever.
At forty-five, I want to know even our limits.
I touch you knowing we weren’t born tomorrow,
and somehow, each of us will help the other live,
and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.

You do not know what it means to be in love.
And when you say you love me it is empty,
And not enough.
This wisdom is a necessity as I move on.
I cannot allow myself to believe
That true love can deceive
Or do harm.
That it is something that abandons,
That leaves
Or is anything but warm.
So I will define love as something less inept,
Because the love you understand
Is the love that you accept
And I will not accept less than transcendent
Or above
Love cannot destroy me,
And if it can,
It isn’t love.

I don’t love women
the way men love women.
I don’t want to tame them.
I don’t want to own them.
I don’t want to treat them
Like a trophy in a case.

I just want to be close to them.

It’s still hunger,
but a different kind of hunger.

– I almost didn’t recognize it at first.

The first time I really let myself
fall in love with a woman,
I didn’t feel butterflies.
I never felt nervous.

The moment I was in her arms,
I knew
I was home.

When all the drowsy metaphors
about women and fruit
have been peeled
and devoured;

there’s just you, me
a bowl full of summer peaches,
two parentheses
with nothing in between
	(just space)
for the tongue’s imagination

She is a year ago.
She is the ache in the empty,
the first time you changed your mind
and the last time you were sorry about it.
She is a city sleeping beside you,
warm and vast and familiar, streetlights
yawning and stretching,
and you have never. You have never.
You have never loved someone like this.
She is your first stomach ache.
Your first panic attack and your
favorite cold shower.
A mountain is moving somewhere
inside of you, and her handprints are all over it.
Here. Here. Here, you love her.
In the fractured morning, full of
too tired and too sad, she is the first
foot that leaves the bed.
She is the fight in you, the winning
and the losing battle
floating like a shipwreck in your chest.
When they ask you what your favorite moment is,
You will say Her.
You will always say Her.

I told my woman,
I said,
Woman I ain't in the mood
for no, girl to girl love
the kind that's only made
when the moon is full, and the cat is fed
I've been waiting for you
on the edge of the bed,
there is a stairwell to the left
a ladder to the right, take any route you like
but, you hurry and climb inside of me,
I need to feel your body weight
pressing into mine, as I tear at the flesh
on your round behind, Please
Now, don't go P.C. all over me
I want to hear you call out my name,
along with God's, Jesus, and all twelve apostles
let's not wrestle with semantics
there ain't no other way to say it
there ain't no other way to claim it,
except to say, I need some woman to woman love
some of that sweat pouring, politically incorrect
arching my back
taking no prisoners
neighbors banging on the wall, kind of love
need you ready and willing,
to come and climb
inside
of me.

This is how it is with me:
so strong, I want to draw the egg
from your womb and nourish it in my own.
I want to mother your child made only
of us, of me, you: no borrowed seed
from any man. I want to re-fashion
the matrix of creation, make a human being
from the human love that passes between
our bodies. Sweetheart, this is how it is:
when you emerge from the bedroom
in a clean cotton shirt, sleeves pushed back
over forearms, scented with cologne
from an amber bottle—I want to open
my heart, the brightest aching slit
of my soul, receive your pearl.
I watch your hands, wait for the sign
that means you’ll touch me,
open me, fill me; wait for that moment
when your desire leaps inside me.

The trees have kept some lingering sun in their branches,
Veiled like a woman, evoking another time,
The twilight passes, weeping. My fingers climb,
Trembling, provocative, the line of your haunches.

My ingenious fingers wait when they have found
The petal flesh beneath the robe they part.
How curious, complex, the touch, this subtle art–
As the dream of fragrance, the miracle of sound.

I follow slowly the graceful contours of your hips,
The curves of your shoulders, your neck, your unappeased breasts.
In your white voluptuousness my desire rests,
Swooning, refusing itself the kisses of your lips.