cómo te quiero.

“Te quiero, pero no como ese querer que viene antes de amar, te quiero como quiero ir a París.”

i wanted to delete that cortázar quote but every time i tried, i remembered that whenever i pick up hopscotch (rayuela), i think of you.

poetry is something i turn to when i need answers, or when i can't phrase my questions. i have never been a poet though i have found myself spouting it on more than one occasion. and i keep turning to it now, as if it holds what i have been so tirelessly looking for.

but i am tired, love.

i can never know how i love you. i can never understand how you love me. i can be and un-be at the same time, if such a thing has ever been possible.

because i do love you, with and without all complexities and pride. i love you simply, and intricately, and i love you close and i love you from a distance. i know i love you, even on the days i feel you have forgotten, and especially on the nights where i wish not to love you anymore. i am exhausted, drained. i can feel the love, yes, but with an unmistakable touch of loneliness, and it feels colder than what they told me love looks like.

i think about you. constantly. relentlessly.

i love you. constantly. achingly.

i do not miss you, but you, you are missing from me. a part of me i cannot bear to touch whenever you are not near.

fleurs du papier

if i could paint you, i would use all the colours of carnations
the angry slashes of red on a golden morning sky
the sun that sets in the caribbean sea

i would take the stars, draw them in your eyes
in the tip of your tongue
i would stitch your name upon the waves
create monuments of sand, and salt, and words

i would map the constellations on your skin
draw the way from your heart to mine,
throw away the compass

i hold your memory in the palm of my hand,
and you, somewhere between my fingers

i carry your smile in the inseam of my cheek,
a kiss hidden in that place between the darkest point of night and the sounds of our alarms
an i love you, somewhere between kissing you and dreaming i do

if i could paint your smile
the colour of winter come
i would kiss my summers on the tip of your nose
taste spring in the rose of your cheeks

loving you is not a seasonal event
every day i fall, get up,

fall again, harder

but there is no autumn,

no prelude to the cold

it will hit once you are gone

breathing in the light, fantastic

i fell in love between two breaths
the first -- the one you stole when you first kissed me
and you returned it promptly, breathed into me with a smile
i could never forget

the other was more subtle,
clocked between empty airport seats
and the realisation
that i may have missed something important,
and i might be too late.

i took a deep breath
looked straight ahead,
remembered what you looked like when i left

i didn't even tell you i loved you

if there are worse things;

if there are worse things than longing for you, then i am blessed that this is my cross and i bear it so proudly. my days, which have been so empty, are filled almost entirely by your absence. i miss your voice and your laughter, and the way your eyes smiled at the corners whenever i managed to surprise you. i bury these things in pockets i don't have, where my hands cannot reach them afterwards.

i keep your kisses warm, stitched upon my skin.  your words are stapled to the roof of my mouth, your name written on the back of my throat. i can taste all of your excuses when i swallow. i wash it all down with time, teaspoons of nostalgia mixed in. la douleur exquise, they call it.

if there are worse things than longing for you, then i am cursed, for i suffer an affliction to which there is no cure, though there are far more deadly poisons out there. your name, which has brought me such joy, has a sweet taste and a bitter texture. this longing that brings the ocean to my eyes and a crisp taste of autumn in the wake of summer, has your eyes, and your shape.

if there are worse things than longing for you, then i am both blessed and cursed that you have been mine to love, and mine to miss. blessed that i could call you mine; cursed that i am yours, still.