…for I would rather be a sucker
than believe in lies
because once they were true
because once they were safe
because once I had it all figured out.
…
he thinks I am a fool
and full well I suppose I am
For loving?
Well worth it.
Or not. What care I?
because it is too late for me to do anything other than love.
(and in my mind’s eye,
I remember everything about that day.)
I would do anything, for you, anything
and no other man has that power, none,
for god speaks to me through you
and only you
and how I know that to be true?
I don’t know.
That is the only thing
that separates me from you:
your knowing yourself to be true.
I know myself to be:
a baby’s breath, sweet and warm, milk of her mother;
a flock of geese, the moon and dusk.
the warm, firm belly of my horse as I lean my head against him,
the coarseness of his hair and the softness of my skin.
I know myself to be a song,
and bells ringing, and phones ringing,
and ticks and tacks and clicks and clacks
and the whirring machinery of the human heart
of the human body of the universal speck of dust
that we believe is modernity
and I know myself to be your eyes,
and the light behind them.
I know myself to be a great roar from a stadium,
a dandelion, a snowflake, a crash, a stabbing wound,
a toothless, hapless smelly man
and the Queen.
And I am available to all of these,
and more,
to know themselves as me:
Here is where you sign your name.
And now my makeup’s smudged, and I’m late for a class,
and Christmas songs, and gifts, and dogs, and mailmen, and
all of the day to day distractions which I love
do beckon for my eyes upon them.
But know this:
in my secret time, within my heart, where
days exist as eons and lifetimes are a smile:
you will forever live.
I am nothing, not even the wind. And yet, I love you so.
