Valentine

You ask for proof
Of love
As if you could sift through a vat of salt
And source that grain
That remarkable grain
That says
I do
You ask for promises
For honesty
You open me like some first print book
Rifle through the pages
Skip to the end
Read between the lines to find the story
I don’t tell
The story you believe to be – the grand mythology
You ask for years
Pulled from my breast like long yellow ribbons
You fly kites with them
On sunny days
You say ‘perhaps then’, ‘one day’, ‘next year’
You plan time
The days commanded by fingertips
Wind themselves into folding zig zags of maps
Tributaries and time lines
The geography of our love
You make promises
Statements, four letter words
You say ‘never’, ‘hurt’,
You say ‘always’
I know better
You open yourself
Your own pages, you scrawl and entwine me in the chapters of your soul
You say ‘read me’
You say ‘You’ll miss the best part’
I ask you where the twist in the plot is – the dénouement
You say ‘this is how much I love you’
Impossibly measured doses of you
Said with such sincerity
They strike my heart like blows from a hammer
When did I become so cynical?
When did I stop measuring, planning, reading?
We hold hands
Our fingers laced
The knot of love
Tight, strong
So easily pulled undone.