Please wear me down to smooth, don’t stop midway

Please wear me down to smooth, don’t stop midway

Nathaniel Brown

My love for you is now no more a choice.
I made it and then set myself to work 
with joy but also suffering, which smooths
the veins and seams, the strata, one by one,
of life built slowly–wrinkled rock worn down
to youth and even further: weathered, glossed
from sun and wind, from sand, and babies, too.
I like the thought of being marked by you,
by life lived working at our common love.
You’ve hewn, and ground, and chipped away my dross 
undone the rough and jagged stone I was.
You’re not through yet, of course, I’m far from done.
Erode me to the shape that comfort says 
will suit us both and in the suiting see us shine.

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Nathaniel Brown
Doctor & Poet

Nathaniel’s work has been published—or is forthcoming—in Rust and Moth, Amethyst Review, Anesthesiology, and Academic Medicine, among others. He lives and practices medicine in New Mexico. 

Photography by Ozan Tabakoğlu