Love's Testing Poem by Lonnie Hicks

If my pain is your pleasure
then I will continence it
although I know I shouldn't.

If you in loving me
draw blood
I will wipe it clean
gauze and bandage it.

If my pleasure is to allow you
this abandonment
from previous
hurts you've endured,
if this then is the price
I must pay
then I am willing to expend
that coin to see where
all of this new love is going.

I too,
have my
secret price;
you too
must pay
for hurts
from my secret past.

And since you are next
and closest now
you'll have to bare
your heart
your chest
and take my blows;

misdirected it's true
and rightly belonging to another
who now
has receded to my receding past.

Fair is fair:
I must hurt
for wrongs done you
and versa vice;
and simultaneously
endure
the test that love
presents
to all new
couples;
Wily past Hurts and Harms

from previous lovers-
putting new love to
sometimes
hurtful tests.
.
Flail away
we both
do;
true love
at the other end
my faith says
will endure.