there was a moment in time
when death sat beside me on a park bench
and he had rested his hand on the gap between us

i,

too,

rested my hand there
and brushed my fingers against his

and for a chaste moment
i savoured the warmth of his skin
and intertwined my hand with his

but he stood up

and left

and maybe he knew,

it was for the better.

I love him
I tell myself
I know that
We will be together forever
I don’t believe that
We could be separated
My thoughts tell me that
He’s the love of my life
Sometimes my heart lies and says
I could live an eternity
Without him
Like my friends say
“We’re perfect for each other”
And you can’t tell me
He’s not the one.

Now read from bottom to top.

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

I have been practicing form
with many curls of graphite on paper
between soft blue and white lines
scratching hollow hearts in repetition
until they bend into V’s:
that very shape children turn birds into.

Careful and careless with my heart
as I am with the storm cloud of little ones
on my pages
flurried into place by my absent mind
I am absent
I am filled to my throat with smoke,
the desire to take flight,
absent in thoughts of you.

The shape of an arrowhead,
Eros’ penetrating tip.
The angle of a woman’s *******.
The bend of a wishbone ready to snap.
These could all be called
the shape of love

but my love will always be a bird too high, a V windbound,
that I will pin to my fridge with a magnet
and look at every other Sunday
when I remember it.