A long time ago I tried to write
A love poem to a girl of my dreams.
I was burning and I was burning
For her. Instead, it seems

I wrote something about amnesia
And forgetting how to feel.
I wanted to win a dark mistress’s heart
Only the burning was real.

Or a different story:
The gulf between objects and desire.
Like the soul in Emerson’s tale,
We can never touch our beloved with fire.

Or loss. A long-legged beauty
Disappeared into echoes that I can’t explain.
Still burning with thirst
I wrote about ashes and pain.

Then I met you on a blooming campus path.
You had sinewy curves and a powerful flame
In your eyes that left me burning
To give your pleasure a secret name.

But it turned into a different plot.
You told me I set something inside you free.
It was new and I was still learning.
I told you, “Come burn with me.”

I think I know what the problem was.
I needed to learn a language from you,
The wordless speech that tongue teaches tongue,
Eye glints to eye, that skin lets through.

And our bodies coiled together
And your brown skin and my pale skin
Entangled in the heat of unity.
The burning flowed from outside to in.

There has to be a word for this,
Something enduring, strong.
Come close, I’ll try to whisper it.
Though I might get it wrong.