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for Willem
My love,
you are water upon water
upon water until it turns
azure, mountainous.
The horizon fills like sand
between glass marbles. So much
has passed between us—
last night you told me
to press your hand
harder and harder as I pained.
The sunset was at its last
embers. The dark was stealing
the blue light from our room.
I was falling into you.
~ ~
Compress water and it turns to ice— compress beauty
and it loses breath. Gaze at it too long, and even the wide
mirror of the ocean will shatter.
~ ~
My Willem,
between us, God has descended in all His atoms.
We have not yet learned to hold Him.
When they first
glimpsed Creation, it was only
half-lit.
Half-lit,
as in, only half-clear—
that night, they discerned
and imagined.
In the mind’s waters,
a blurring, a refraction.
There, we were brimming,
we were multitudes,
but they saw our darkness
and named us Dark.
How to love like water loves
when it’s impossible to even taste
all the ghostly sediments
each time you take a sip
Impossible to savor
the salt in your blood
the light and island shorelines
in each living cell
When even the plainest mouthful
tastes more of you than you of it
Sweetest of absences
that frees in wave after wave
debris of thought like the dead,
the drowned, the vanished, and yet
sails your lips
on a voyage toward another’s, plying
all luck and regret
Worship, splash, guzzle, or forget
It clears any difference
Stone washer and mountain dissolver
that will
outlive us, even the memory of
all any eyes touched
Wasp and cactus in a desert
Comet through outer space
Sleep among all the cloud-shepherds’ children
A love so perpetually current
it doesn’t care that you love
without even knowing you love
what you couldn’t survive
three days without
How to love like that: wild
dream-sparkler and meticulous architect
of every snowflake
Wise, ebullient, and generous
as the rain
Deepest of miracles
for a time
borrowing and replenishing
a self
overflowing with fate
Parked in the fields
All night
So many years ago,
We saw
A lake beside us
When the moon rose.
I remember
Leaving that ancient car
Together. I remember
Standing in the white grass
Beside it. We groped
Our way together
Downhill in the bright
Incredible light
Beginning to wonder
Whether it could be lake
Or fog
We saw, our heads
Ringing under the stars we walked
To where it would have wet our feet
Had it been water
Darling, I want you to buy me a car in my favorite color.
My favorite color is wine.
Also, give me a flower in a paper cup.
You shouldn’t ever leave me.
That’s a way to get your tuxedo cried on.
Darling, why don’t we share adjoining rooms?
Let’s get stewed to the eyeballs.
Now let’s have a fight while I brush my hair.
Can you be trusted?
So why don’t you come over to our table and introduce yourself?