Perhaps the sound only of love in the fragments of morning, sticky, unyielding, in your throat - the light and its smooth discourse a momentary hand on your back. And then not only the sound but the possibility of something without words - the tepidness of roja in the balkan heat, the earthiness of that thing without a name,
and there have been times where the wind has blown against your thigh, no stranger, and the pasta hanging limply from your fork, if photographed against the chipped blue plate, and the hand of the man of which you love now, blending into the background could be beautiful. How, at times, when it is grey, you remember how best the evening carries spanish guitar, like a blue corn chip the perfect vehicle for salsa verde.
there is no time where you have been uncertain about the future, even now staring into tomorrow, past the big expensive glass doors, the still lake decorated with lily pads you are still unsure if it will last until tomorrow, and you do not say this, when he asks you about love. you tell him only of what you are certain and you say - i do not wish to die here, in a country that does not know my name - and he tells you he doesn't understand - and you say what you believe he wants to hear - that true love brings respite from cowardice - and that you love him and now most times you are rarely afraid - but what you wish to say is that i do not want to wake up tomorrow and realise i do not love you, and that i would like to be painted and raw along the veranda behind the rain and the thunder, a lone cigar circling an ashtray - but what good is all of this in the face of fear.
the sun sometimes comes at an angle, your lover once handsome the day before so plain and ordinary in the brilliance of morning, love once sticky and warm, runs cooly along your palm or not at all. the mouth of morning once the expression of hunger and passion, rests sourly at your ear, the pasta so sensual and lucious, wet and limp.
love is sometimes quiet, you remember from that one time when you were 17. love must be worked out like a kink, or the last inch of your waist, love must be exercised every day, it must be balanced, it must be mixed, or stirred, perhaps even shaken.
you hold that hand hard, ignoring the nothing, the silence of the evening, the unevenness of his eyes. you imagine how you look in the waning light - small, scared, ugly. he looks at you and squeezes back. and says, how can i show that i love you, even more, today than yesterday, and certainly more than tomorrow, and you say i don't know. and you pause, and the light and the guitar and the smell of pepper and squid, and you say, let tomorrow come and ask me again.
ask me again - and love is quiet movement, pure, and simple, resting warmly in your throat like wine.