I was just thinking of the first poem I wrote. Drunk on my best friends floor, dark, half asleep, the phrases stuck out. I grabbed a notebook and pen and scrawled what I imagined were the right shapes for the words in the dark.

‘Swung wide,

Sweet chariot,

Till we all fall down’

Childish, stupid, simple. But it feels nice.

I wonder

At these hours

Some nights

How our tides recede

The gravity

On a clear evening

When it’s just you and

Every damn star

Like a Sistine ceiling

I wonder

If the sky

Is just a cheap honeymoon suite

Mirror above the bed

When the city

Lights line up

Like cigarette cherries

On malcontent

Evening streets

We’re at the top of the Ferris wheel

Time

Still to shy

To impose much of anything

On us

Staring

At the city

Sleeping next to the sea

They’re lying

Virgin bodies

Like empty autumns

Unashamed

The old

Rocking chair couple

Tide on the sand

Like thumbs across

The back of palms

We can see everything

She tried to recall the lines he read her that first night. They came back, trickling, first in the French he spoke them in, then what they meant; ‘ J’aime, et je veux chanter la joie et la paresse,…’ She paused on the line, whispered to herself, ‘I love, and want to sing of joy and laziness,…’ meandering randomly across the lines she rose deliberately and paced around the Oak standing firm next to her.

‘O Muse! que m’importe ou la mort ou la vie ?
J’aime, et je veux pâlir; j’aime et je veux souffrir ;
J’aime, et pour un baiser je donne mon génie ;
J’aime, et je veux sentir sur ma joue amaigrie
Ruisseler une source impossible à tarir’

Her French was poor, she struggled with the words as she shut her eyes tight and tried to recall;

‘O Muse! What does it matter, life or death?

I love, and want pallor, I love and want the pain;
I love, my genius for a kiss I won’t disdain;
I love, and want to feel on my cheek wan
That stream from endless spring forever drawn.’

She stopped, bit her lip, then opened her eyes to the city that lay before her. Like a great body of still water, reflecting the stars above, the street lights scattered across the distance. People in their houses, asleep, laying next to their lovers, down the hall from their children, the one restless wanderer humming quietly an old song as he walks the street.

She continued reciting;

‘Ma folle experience et mes soucis d’un jour,
Et je veux raconter et répéter sans cesse
Qu’après avoir juré de vivre sans maîtresse,
J’ai fait serment de vivre et de mourir d’amour.’

Remembering the meaning;
‘Of my crazed life and cares of just one day.
I want to tell and say forever and ceaseless
That once vowing to live without mistress,
Only of love I vow to live and die.’

It was so easy for her to feel disdain towards the way he treated the situation, their relationship; how he neglected to share the fact he was dying from the start. All the scattered days he’d pause while talking, hands shaking, as he laughed and tried to hide his symptoms.

Settling at last to the place in the grass where they’d sit, and watch the city, she whispered to herself the last stanza of the poem, her least favorite part;

‘Dépouille devant tous l’orgueil qui te dévore,
Coeur gonflé d’amertume et qui t’es cru fermé.
Aime, et tu renaîtras; fais-toi fleur pour éclore.
Après avoir souffert, il faut souffrir encore ;
Il faut aimer sans cesse, après avoir aimé.’

She sighed a great gust in time with the sway of the hanging limbs of the great Oak before her, reluctantly translating those final lines;

‘Renounce to all your pride that’s killing you
The bitter-filled heart that you thought was closed.
Love and revive; to blossom be a flower.
Having suffered, even more you must suffer,
And keep loving, after having so loved.’

After that she realized why he read her that poem, why he never told her he was sick until he didn’t have the strength to leave bed anymore. Her life was a tangled web enough, but that of which we sigh for, the dreams we chase in our waking hours, fresh from that recurring dream, that is to maintian these feelings, this love, that hope for some sigh of relief beyond death. She would never have taken the risk, let love in, like the curious stranger he was in her life. He wore the attire of ideal circumstances, more so than she had ever been privilidged to be a part of. Slowly engaging every portion of her body with ease in that trust, like second hand smoke in a narrow hall.

If it weren’t for his death, his life would have less significance for her, she’d still be walking alongside, holding his hand, feeling safe, relying on his strength, as she felt she had none of her own. But since then, ‘having suffered, even more…’ her heart was finally able to continue to love, after having so loved.

Swing like back porch fireflies

In invisible pairs

Like how eyes dance

Looking for that space

On the curve

Of your neck

Wondering if our hands still fit

Right

Like every first time

She’d dance around the questions

Like ballet shoes

On piano strings

And though it’s such

A graceful thing to see

Her minor notes

Have become a major theme

Somehow I felt it was necessary

That it’d do some good

To see the black night

Behind the blue eyes

And I love you even more

Than I ever thought I could

So we leave together

To the grass that’s greener

And eyes that are bluer

After the black night finds its way

Until I need a second chance

The third, fourth

Twenty five times

A year passed

And we set to making things right

Still you sing

Just as lovely

When you ask what I see

In you

As to want

And feel the need

Just like your blue eyes

When color doesn’t matter

Cause green

Is just as pretty

Or brown

Like hills by the train tracks

While you sleep through towns

And

You are the closest thing to me

The following beat

But lately the worlds been pointing

At these tracks laid out on my arms

And I lose myself trying to count

Like when I look up at the stars

But you turn to me

And say

Every misstep is just as meaningful to me

As the reason I breathe into you

 As the seasons try to count

Every year they fall in love with the earth

Just because it has those pretty blue eyes

Of two thirds seas

One third flecks of green

Or what’s left at least

Because we built our cities

Trying to chase

That greener grass

At a quicker pace

Now the air is filled with smoke

That carves wrinkles

Into my face

And even if I leave

The check marks

On the calendar

Still show

Still somehow

I felt it was necessary

That it’d do some good

To see the black night

Behind the blue eyes

And I love you even more

Than I ever thought I could

So let’s leave together

Hold my fingers tighter

Than nicotine stains

And we’ll run away

To the grass that’s greener

And eyes that are bluer

After the black night finds its way

You asked me why I love you

And the fury in your voice silenced my mind

I could not count the ways

Broken dishes and fragments of the photograph

Intended as a birthday gift filled my eyes

Your eyes, usually as blue as the sky under which we met

Were red

Red like autumn leaves which shake in the wind

Almost as much as you demand

‘Well?’

But I cannot count the ways

I love you, because you are

Because you said I love you first

Because, under the sheets you laugh and talk in funny voices

Because you hold hands with all your friends

Because the sun caresses your face and is not jealous

When I do

Because of your mouth becoming fuller as you fix your hair

Because you give me piggy back rides while strangers

Stare, and you begin running faster

Because we sat on the train platform steps

From 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.

And all we ever said

Was hello

Because we don’t need

To crowd the air with

Conversation

Or talk about our day

Cause time spent holding

You tight is time

It’s okay to be quiet

Because you made a

Picnic on our living room floor

Cause we couldn’t

Afford a table or chairs

Because you’d tell me I

Shouldn’t smoke while

You borrow my cigarette

For a drag

Then laugh

Because you

Budgeted for cigarettes

But not the gas bill

Then brought me cold

Tap water instant coffee

Blowing off its pretend

Heat before you handed

It to me

Because you filled

Your purse with pastries

To bring home from

Your A.A. meeting

Because you have the

Courage to stay clean

To pass up a drink

I know that strength

Doesn’t come from me

But call your motivation God or

Your P.O.

I’m just glad to see

Your face shining

Your eyes clear

You sitting next to

Me

Here

In our home

A one bedroom apartment

The place where

We honeymooned

Pretending it was Rome

And our bikes were gondolas

While we ride the

 Midnight road

On our way

Home

To where we lay close

I avert my eyes from yours

And feel my insides begin to melt

My bones to collapse

I feel my heart in my stomach, or lower

My hands gather the broken shards off the floor

Every movement exaggerated, every moment an hour

Your voice, softer now pleading, asking again, ‘Why do you love me?’

Because of trains, and sun, and your name,

I love you because you are.