The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through the nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
(pablo neruda)
You’d have been proud of me, Love. I took a trip alone to the art
museum. I didn’t simply visit with Mabel and eat spinach salad,
picking out the bacon bits and egg yolks. A traveling exhibit of
Greek sculptures brought busloads of visitors, and I kept staring
at a lovely male statue with a chipped place where the penis once
was. The other day I read a note posted on the glass door of The
Pasta Palace, Cook Needed, I was sure it said Cock Needed. Didn’t
you tell me the Greek artisans sculpted idealized versions of men
and women and painted them in exquisite colors? Of course all
the color is gone. Which reminds me of our discussion of Venus
de Milo’s arms. You said it makes no difference that she’s armless.
But she looks so defenseless without them. I can’t help picturing
her lovely white arms, how they must be deep in the soil of histo-
ry, reaching up or down in a gesture of despair. Once they hung
from her stone body, one arm covering her breasts, one hand de-
murely sheilding her crotch like a fig leaf. It’s the missing parts,
Love. They matter. What they add. What they take away.
(nin andrews)
There are spaces in things and spaces between
that hold the color of sorrow,
the soundless movies no one watches, playing
and playing on our walls. Better than anyone,
these listless structures understood the strain
of memories, his footsteps on their frigid tile.
And how I could not follow,
and they held me there in their yellow light.
(nin andrews)
Nothing I can sing
will bring you back.
Not the songs of a hundred horses running
until they become wind
Not the personal song of the rain
who makes love to the earth.
…
I will never forget you. Your nakedness
haunts me in the dawn when I cannot distinguish your
flushed brown skin from the burning horizon, or my hands.
The smell of chaos lingers in the clothes
you left behind. I hold you
there.
(joy harjo)
Never mind
that he’s made your skeleton into a piano,
soft music from your bones.
It’s not enough. A woman knows these things
and the dark taste of smoke on your lips.
(nin andrews)
Meanwhile,
over the rhythm of waves
the mallards are rowing the wind
in perfect rhythm to show
what’s possible without instruction.
(samuel hazo)
When you date someone, it’s like taking one long course in who that person is, and then when you break up all that stuff becomes useless. It’s the emotional equivalent of an English degree.
— how i met your mother
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