About Love

Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.   --Rumi

In my dream, you are standing by the fence
with an armload of sunflowers
and above them, your sweet boyish face
that makes my heart stumble. We stay outside
and talk for hours, and you are not dead
and it does not seem strange.

I might be clinically insane
every now and then, and perhaps
irretrievably narcissistic
but I know more about love than most people.
I know love is the one who'll drive
all night in a driving rain
just to hold your hand. You knew this, too
and when I flew for miles to see you
in the hospital though there was nothing
much to say, we sat together
and didn't say much
and it was enough.

You taught me nearly everything
I know about love, and I learned the rest
from hard experience: what a person says
means something
but what he does means everything.
Also, that thing about sticks and stones
is bullshit: words can bite and burn
down to the bone, quick as anything.

You don't have to be altruistic
to feel grief; sanity is not required
in order to love someone
so deeply that when they are gone
they take with them a whole band in the spectrum
of your color wheel. Suddenly, blue
no longer exists
and your sky will never look the same:
clouds drifting across pale grey.

Love is a strange
and haunted animal. It will stay
long after all the other guests
have left the party.
It curls itself around me now
familiar as an old friend, as I wake
to a world where you are not.
I watch as dawn comes
and the stars press themselves into her arms
and fall asleep, one by one.
This is how I know
you and I and everything
are always alright.



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