i do not love you because
of your strong shoulders to carry me
or the long-wracked intellectual faculties that desert me
or even your face – that launched the ship of my glass-bottle heart
and sent me crashing onto a burning shore camped by all my worst fears;
or because of the way my emptiness frames you
like the moon
on the blank pages of my frostbitten heart
(but as they say, what is a heart anyway?)
i do not love you because
you love me
besides,
– there is no evidence to support such an abstraction.
i do not even love you because
you bring me my tea, and tuck my feet under the blanket in the winter times
or because of that half-arsed smirk
– the one that makes me want to punch your mouth
or because i should love you because you are, i suppose, my lover.
But,
there are small things
the way your teeth show when you laugh
and your yellow tee-shirt – ugly sandals
and the way you sweat when i run from you on gritty sand beaches
12 (or so) kilometres from your white walls and
half-empty photo albums
that funny face you make
and your rough, hardened fingers from miles of copper guitar strings
over miles of long dusty roads
when we drive, minutes stuck between our polaroid past and
the wind-tossed hair at the end of the hot orange horizon
sun roof, sunglasses
not smiling because we are not obligated
how, when we lie together, your breaths rasping in the throat of your sleep
i steal your heat,
survive.