The love in my body doesn’t understand the white bees, dark stars, and ships of hyacinths that Neruda knew. My love doesn’t understand his metaphors of twilight shadows, lavender kisses, and sea foam. My love has chosen, instead, the bloodied half of the moon. The visceral side of the soul: bile, breath, bowels. Very occasionally, emanating from the breast: blossoms.
There’s no beauty here, in these feelings for you, trapped and droning like house flies. I think of how little I deserve your virtue, your hands that are as guileless as the wind moving over fields. Forgive me. My love doesn’t live in the real world. Honestly, it builds nothing of purpose. The perversion of the empire of my love by the coast, made from mist, muscle, and magnolias. It exists half a mirage away from collapsing into the saltwater.
Did you ever suspect that I hid so much dominating energy within this body? Neruda would have recoiled at how much I desire–so shamefully–to see you sob each time I leave. He would have warned me against this decadence. This gambling of suffering, paid for with your purity. But there is still time, isn’t there? So much time, yet, to dream thoughtlessly, and to inflict those wounds that can be cured only by nakedness.
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