Promise

I love, love that my shadow
is a parrot, that I love to eat
what it loves to eat, that I love to give it what I don’t have
I love asking, do you still love me
I love your auriculae, that they love to hear: I love risk

I love aroused rooms inviting us to lie down as their roof
I love lying on my side, casting a shadow for a straight line
casting a string of villages for a voluptuous body
I want the mole nearest your lip
to know, this is my promise

I love that the intelligence in my dreams is an ambitious groom
I love eating raw meat, staring straight at hell
but I still love secretly playing the violin in your embrace
I love putting out the lights early, and waiting
for your body to relight the room

I love that when I go to sleep, the pillow is covered in plums
and that when I wake, the plums go back to their branches
I love that the waves attract the forward deck all night long
I love to shout: you’ll be back
I love tormenting the port like this, and tormenting words

I love controlling myself before the table
I love sticking my hand in the sea
I love spreading my five fingers out at once
to grab tightly to the edge of the wheat field
I love that my five fingers are your five boyfriends

I love that memory is a life a bit less
but still more than what a woman forgets when
walking toward me, as if that girl with the violin case
thirty years ago, on the street, in the dusk
were still smiling at me for no reason

and I love even more that we are a pair of torpedoes
waiting for someone to shoot us again
I love joining with you in the depths of the sea, that you
are mine, only mine, I still
love to say it, love to sing my promise—