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.”