Listen: Were there ever any doubt as to the way I loved you, dear, please note —
today at your doorstep I dropped chrysanthemums and one piece of lost and stolen
time, seven daydreams fashioned by hope, soft paper vellum, a groaning week in May,
and only the best of chance.
 
Yesterday, I missed you so deeply, my chest ached for your subtle sound echoing
through thick cartilage to reach me amplified, misted, sweet, and bold — longed
for you as I long for the taste of your tongue on mine or the subtle heat of your clothed
shoulder near.
 
It is regular, lately, how much I dream I kiss you, touch you, taste you where our
hearts can top each other, where fragile skin glides and collides. So, honest, love,
were there ever any doubt as how I love you, listen. Look: Today a man too many
years your senior stood
 
in line before me; but when I cemented your brain and heart to his frame, immediately,
I loved him, gazed at him adoringly, with hunger, wanting at once the span of his
short build to hang on mine, the touch of his white hair to brush my chest, and the absent
smile hid behind a frown
 
to reappear. Oh, la — I nearly invited him to visit my bed, that erstwhile ghost of you,
clamored for his presence in those places I most seek you, in dreamy night or the taste
of your tears: Listen, distant one: were there ever any doubt as to how
I love you, don’t doubt now. 
 
Let me find you in my sheets and heart’s swelled music at long last, where I would
always, with best intentions, lend you this heart’s expansion should you want it,
let it recreate your pulse — for though this may mean I’d lose it for a while,
watching lingeringly from remote
 
as it traveled past foreign shores and climes, I’d tell it never cease its love
for you, then kiss it goodbye, offering just one ready piece of advice on
love and loving: To be true to me, completely, it must
deny you nothing.

Heather M Fowler