so i’m posting it, one of my favourite love poems ever, for the world to read.

by Nora, God of Thunder.
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I Could

 

 

When I first met you,

in the hot dark by the blue river,

I felt I could read my future in the spaces of your speech.

I felt I could speak you poems built of math

because that is the only language I know

that can encompass the kind of perfection

I need to describe you.

I could write anthologies to you

across my naked breasts

walk across this country topless

knowing that of all the elicited stares

maybe someone would read and know

the history of your beauty.

I could steal my neighbor’s manicured car

camouflage it with the dust of my life

when I leave this city behind to find myself in yours.

-and I know I‘m poor, I have just enough

for a three quarter tank if I‘m lucky-

but I will drive until the car chokes and dies

on that dust.

I will walk ’til I fall

I will crawl if I must

and still sing songs of heat-wave meetings.

I could stretch my hide over a framework of logs,

let the sun harden it to leather,

and then chew it soft

and on it paint your face from memory.

I could give up entirely.

Lay my frame down

and while forests grow between my bones

the curling white fingers of my ribcage

will point to the space left by my heart and say,

This is where love was.

And the trees fed by the body that was me

will grow murmuring leaves

each one whispering,

I love you.

I could be satisfied to be buried beside you,

Or spread on the same wind

So our ashes to ashes

Can have chance collisions

Among these galaxies of bodies.

I might never see you again

But I‘d still devote my words to you

My every day filled

With the soft sad tracings

Of dust and ash on the breath

Of someone saying,

“I love you,

I love you,

I love you.”