What Love looked like in 7th grade

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Foi com um poema de amor que começamos a conversar, então achei justo me valer disso para uma celebração. Queria eu poder escrever um poema, amor, mas isso está além das minhas capacidades, mesmo – e principalmente – você me chamando de poeta maltratado. Hoje eu uso as palavras dos outros apenas por simbologia. Minhas palavras são parcas em estilo, mas sinceras e cheias de sentimento. Eu nunca vou me cansar de dizer que eu te amo, com todas as letras, do jeito mais simples possível, e de todos os jeitos complexos que eu puder encontrar. Aqui eu empresto as palavras dos outros pra minha voz poder recriar o nosso amor, que parece inventado, mas é real. É tão poético quanto real. Quero falar sobre dançar, sobre casar e sobre envelhecer juntos. Quero que me ouça, ao pé do ouvido. Gosto de falar ao pé do ouvido, roçando o nariz na sua orelha, descendo pelo pescoço pra sentir o seu cheiro gostoso de mulher da minha vida. Quero morder sua bochecha dizendo que você é a mulher da minha vida. Fazer amor – fazer amor, sim – com cada pedacinho do seu corpo. Percebeu que eu ensaio meus votos de casamento quase todos os dias? Eu fico me imaginando falando essas coisas na frente de todas as pessoas que amamos e, ao invés de sentir algum tipo de vergonha, constrangimento, eu sorrio e fico louco pra que isso aconteça logo. Eu mal posso esperar pra expressar mais amor. Eu transbordo amor e quero que todo mundo saiba. E todo mundo já sabe, não tem como não saber, então eu espero que sorriam também todas as vezes que eu fizer, porque eu vou estar sorrindo muito. Você sabe que eu tô sempre sorrindo quando estamos juntos. O tempo quase inteiro. E quando você não está por perto, às vezes me pego sorrindo também, só de pensar em você, só de lembrar de você. Eu sou feliz só de você existir. Enquanto existir Jordan nesse mundo, ele vai ser completamente apaixonado por essa tal de Ana Mendieta, que ele conhece há quase um ano e espera passar pelo menos uns sessenta ao lado dela. Pelo menos. Eu te amo, amor. Feliz sete meses pra nós. 

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The Greatest Love

She is sixty. She lives the greatest love of her life. She walks arm-in-arm with her dear one,   her hair streams in the wind. Her dear one says: “You have hair like pearls.” Her children say:   “Old fool.”

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Vow

It will be windy for a while until it isn’t. The waves will shoal. A red-legged cormorant will trace her double along glassy water, forgetting they are hungry. The sea will play this motif over and over, but there will be no preparing for it otherwise. Water will quiver in driftwood. Sound preceding absence, a white dog trailing a smaller one: ghost and noon shadow, two motes disappearing into surf. And when the low tide comes lapping and clear, the curled fronds of seaweed will furl and splay, their algal sisters brushing strands against sands where littleneck clams feed underwater. Light rain will fall and one cannot help but lean into the uncertainty of the sea. Bow: a knot of two loops, two loose ends, our bodies on either side of this shore where we will dip our hands to feel what can’t be seen. Horseshoe crabs whose blue blood rich in copper will reach for cover, hinged between clouds and sea. It will never be enough, the bull kelp like a whip coiling in tender hands, hands who know to take or be taken, but take nothing with them: I will marry you. I will marry you. So we can owe what we own to every beautiful thing.

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Valentine

At first, we had ways of talking That filled up the evening Until some things could be said. It was a made-up Situation in which lives could be lost. Whatever that was now grows inside Our bodies—a spongy, pulpy cell— Causing pieces of paper we hold In our hands to appear And disappear. All I ask Is to take me away from this place, To another place, very much like This place, where we can meet And six months later Be married. You laughed and went with me. 

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Slow Dance on the Highway

You follow close behind me, for a thousand miles responsive to my movements. I signal, you signal back. We will meet at the next exit. You blow kisses, which I return. You mouth "I love you," a message for my rearview mirror. We do a slow tango as we change lanes in tandem, gracefully, as though music were guiding us. It is tighter than bodies locked in heat, this caring, this ardent watching.

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Her Face

Her face          Her tongue       Her wit so fair             so sweet          so sharp first bent         then drew         then hit mine eye         mine ear          my heart Mine eye         Mine ear          My heart to like             to learn            to love her face          her tongue       her wit doth lead         doth teach       doth move Her face          Her tongue       Her wit with beams      with sound       with art doth blind       doth charm       doth knit mine eye         mine ear          my heart Mine eye         Mine ear          My heart with life          with hope         with skill her face         her tongue       her wit doth feed       doth feast         doth fill O face            O tongue          O wit with frowns      with checks      with smart wrong not       vex not            wound not mine eye         mine ear          my heart This eye         This ear            This heart shall joy         shall yield          shall swear her face          her tongue         her wit to serve          to trust             to fear.

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Tamer and Hawk

I thought I was so tough, But gentled at your hands, Cannot be quick enough To fly for you and show That when I go I go At your commands. Even in flight above I am no longer free: You seeled me with your love, I am blind to other birds— The habit of your words Has hooded me. As formerly, I wheel I hover and I twist, But only want the feel, In my possessive thought, Of catcher and of caught Upon your wrist. You but half civilize, Taming me in this way. Through having only eyes For you I fear to lose, I lose to keep, and choose Tamer as prey.

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Being in Love

Awakened from a dream, I curl up and turn. The roses on the dresser smile and your words bloom. The red roses for Valentine’s Day. Like in a film thoughts of you unfold moment by moment. I vaguely hear the sound of your spoon scooping cereal the water stream in the shower the buzzing noise of your electric razor like a singing of cicada. Your footsteps in and out of the bedroom. Your lips touching my cheek lightly. And the sound of the door shutting. In your light I fall asleep again under the warm quilt happily like a child. Upon waking on the kitchen counter I find a half grapefruit carefully cut and sectioned. Such a loving touch is a milestone for my newly found happiness.

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Love Song

Beloved, I have to adore the earth: The wind must have heard your voice once. It echoes and sings like you. The soil must have tasted you once. It is laden with your scent. The trees honor you in gold and blush when you pass. I know why the north country is frozen. It has been trying to preserve your memory. I know why the desert burns with fever. It was wept too long without you. On hands and knees, the ocean begs up the beach, and falls at your feet. I have to adore the mirror of the earth. You have taught her well how to be beautiful.

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Wedding Poem

Friends I am here to modestly report seeing in an orchard in my town a goldfinch kissing a sunflower again and again dangling upside down by its tiny claws steadying itself by snapping open like an old-timey fan its wings again and again, until, swooning, it tumbled off and swooped back to the very same perch, where the sunflower curled its giant swirling of seeds around the bird and leaned back to admire the soft wind nudging the bird's plumage, and friends I could see the points on the flower's stately crown soften and curl inward as it almost indiscernibly lifted the food of its body to the bird's nuzzling mouth whose fervor I could hear from oh 20 or 30 feet away and see from the tiny hulls that sailed from their good racket, which good racket, I have to say was making me blush, and rock up on my tippy-toes, and just barely purse my lips with what I realize now was being, simply, glad, which such love, if we let it, makes us feel.

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Maritime

Did you ever feel this. Astonished by the blood drawn from your arms when you took a step forward and the air scraped you. Maybe you think peace. Think it as a floral carpet, a persistent scent that is supposed to be a memory you treasure. Only it was put there by someone else. When the sun hits it feels like something. Someone cooks soup. You love a person you envy. And the emotions wash into a teacup and you drink them and your teeth are storm-stained. If there were a wave, blue-black, flooding lives out, spinning each person and the next and their needs together as if they were fabrics in a laundry machine, could I ever trust it? If I touch and you forget you have borders against nature. We’re floating somewhere in a primordial pool. And I’ve got you, and I’ve got you.