I guess you never imagined yourself
to be trapped in between letters and dashes
- you are here - in between lines that run
through palms left untouched
through the lead that sheds itself on paper.

Thank you for loving me so unconditionally so as to do the right thing. The other side of my brain would rather comprehend that what you have done means that you have no regard for me - that I am nevertheless and truly unwanted. But, the other half is telling me that this is the kind of love that I have been praying for - unconditional, genuine, and kind. And my soul agrees. Thank you for doing the difficult bit, for having the courage to say the tough truth, and for being here while I endure it.
I think this is the peace that I have been needing.

This made me love you even if and even more.
Thank you, always.

I tried to hide you
Underneath the photos
Where the sun hides too

I tried to hide you
In between pages of books
that I have been meaning to read

I tried to hide you
In between the ticks and the tocks
In between the shadows and the light
In between what I wanted and what I never had

But here you are
You seem to seep through the leaks of my very soul
Suddenly you are in the calluses of my palms
In the sweat drops on my forehead
In the pieces of sand on my eyes
like you never even left

You have me, still.
Even when I cannot say the same for you.

Is it wrong to think that the people who love me may have done something wrong in their past lives simply because I am hard to love?

I still whisper prayers for you even on nights when I immediately fall asleep
as my back touches the bed, my head resting on my pillow
But I guess you are the one who’s tired from running inside my head all day
Some days you just walk, back and forth, pacing, hopping, leaping
Until I find you inside my pockets and then inside my chest where I hear all the beating
Some days I wish you would stop because it would mean that I have also stopped
From thinking about you so much but I guess it won’t just yet — you won’t just yet
I still repeat our fleeting moments when I can’t fall asleep
The smell of lavander can fill my room with all its might but once the thought of you pops
This world I belong to has a habit of pausing only to remind me that you have gotten away
On some days, in an old buick by yourself while on other days, in a carriage with the thing that is supposedly beating in my chest
Then I find myself chasing after you only to once again find myself running in circles
In an empty stadium’s tracks — but you’re there. I see you on the bleachers
but I cannot comprehend if you’re waiting for my victory or for my defeat
On some days, that is the problem. There is this uncertainty that envelops the sparkle in you
And oh, if I could only find out what keeps you from being unsure,
I would do everything in my courage to fight it so that you can stop running
And maybe I can start holding your hands when the lights turn green as we begin walking

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.


translated by W.S. Merwin

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.