# Loveling
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Skunks& and [[Echo]]Our bodies are a collaboration
We both are whining, pining things who walk in [[lovely light]]
Our mode of socialization a co-authoring of a relationship
The other half is you
Our anxieties of commitment and intimacy
Clumsy as the mirrors glued to our limbs
Of editing out parts of each other.
We value our identities
Of voice, of ownership,
language, poetry, even just artful prose,
We set up a [[banquet|the brink]] and fill ourselves overfull
I want to savor your presence whilst you're hereCome outside with me, my dear,
Take the pleasant air and morning cool.
Share a little walk with me.
[[Tell me little stories]] true and false.
Make up [[gentle lies]] for me,
Ways to pass the time and build a world.
To while away, to touch, to kiss,
to seem too sweet to savor,
to talk, to ask, to sit together
too late to sleep enough,
to flare, to burn, to bake,
to roast amid the [[coals]],
to circle around ever closer,
to linger, to linger ever longer...
Take in hand the cup and bowl,
hold them to your lips and drink.
In your mouth you hold the coal
that lights the fire to weld the link
to bind, to seal, to ring [[the brink]]
and hold the words we've said in sync
despite the lack of pen and ink.
Take in hand the sword and staff,
hold them to the sun and speak
words to form an epigraph:
no need to trawl the waves and seek
for knowledge of what makes us weak;
there's time enough that we bespeak
that no two hearts can be unique.
I stand beside myself
and believe all of those things I should not.
I set them before myself,
my own banquet of counterfactuals.
I cherish each in turn.
I take a step outside of myself.
and watch that other me step back into who I was,
[[subsume]] her,
become her,
watch she who I was die.Daily we perform our ablutions,
washing away the grime of existing apart,
that thin film of not being together.
Our [[prayer]] is one of [[apophasis]],
an inside-out hesychasm
defining the undefinable
by walking its muddy shores.
You [[live]] in my every pause.
There is belonging in every breath,
And in each [[caesura]] a settling.
Every line break is your [[home]],
Where you sleep soundly in my silences,
Where you cook your meals in my stammering,
Where you tell me you love me when [[words]] fail.I will call down seven stars
that I may give each a secret.
To the first: my name for you in silence.
To the second: a metalwork flower.
To the third: a cat-eyed smile.
to the fourth: [[a verse without rhyme]].
To the fifth: patience.
To the sixth: comfortable nothings.
To the seventh: some final ending.
I will call down seven stars for you
and circle them 'round your head in a crown.Why beg the water to pronounce our feelings
in the sleepy rush of wave on wave —
why petition the fire for a bit of its burning
that we might wake from such a dream —
why whisper our I-love-yous to the earth
and hope the rocks will nod knowingly —
why ask the air why we are in love
as a breath chasing after the wind
when even the unnamable answers
as a voice [[from within the whirlwind|subsume]],
"Not even I know"?You dwell in my [[bounds|coals]],
own me like a neighborhood —
caught up in hoarse winds,
leaves like laughter cover grass
and chatter around your feet.Three hearts, one room,
five admonitions to only be two.
Three nights, one weekend,
Five sleeps to go, four, three, two.
Three of us, one bed,
And surely five new ways to show love.We are each other's habits,
worn in constant prayer —
a supplication to some unknown god,
that they might grant us
[[too much love|a verse without rhyme]] to handle.How many hours have we spent paw in paw?
How many in each other's arms?
At how high a skew have we been living?
The hours are surely too many to count.
And why should we bother with such a number?
How many hours have we spent paw in paw?
We live our lives in fast time,
the world around us a pitch-drop.
At how high a skew have we been living?
Our days are their hours,
Our hours pass in the blur of stories.
How many hours have we spent paw in paw?
So we spend our time with fingers interlaced.
So we while away the long days in loveliness.
At how high a skew have we been living?
It does not matter. Why would it?
Any who might care must answer to time.
How many hours have we spent paw in paw?
At how high a skew have we been living?
An abjad makes us who we are when we are far apart.
An alphasyllabary draws the borders of our hearts.
Our lives are made of graphemes telling tales to the world
of characters whose brush strokes give us stories never told.
Yet in between the each of us are words beyond the screen.
To each of us the other is a book bereft of ink.
Engrave my name upon a pendant made of brass and time,
and make the sound of me a song to hum yourself to sleep.