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.