PROMISE

I love, I love my shadow,

this parrot, I love to eat

what it loves to eat, I love to give you what I have not

I love to ask if you still love me

I love your auricle, it loves to hear: I love adventure

I love the beloved house inviting us to lie down, become its roof

I love to lie on my side, straightening my shadow,

my plump body a string of small villages

I want that mole close to your lip

to understand, this is my promise

I love that the wisdom of my dreams is packed with a bridegroom’s ambitions

I love eating raw meat, gazing straight at hell

but I still love to play the violin in your breast

I love to turn the lights off early, waiting

for your body to make this room glow

I love when I’m asleep, my pillow all plums

when I wake, all back on their branches

I love that through the whole night the foredeck lures sea waves

I love to shout: you’ll come back

I love to disturb harbors, twist words

I love restraining myself at the desk

I love sliding my hand into the ocean

I love spreading all five fingers at once

clinging to the edge of a wheatfield

I love that my five fingers are still your lovers

I love memory as a kind of life, small

but more than a woman misses

when she walks toward me, like thirty years ago

on a street at sunset, a young woman with an instrument case

smiling at me for no reason

I love most that we’re still a pair of torpedoes

waiting for someone to launch

I love to meet you in the depths, you

who are mine, mine alone, I

say this still, and sing my promise—