I tend the mobile nowlike an injured birdWe text, text, textour significant words.I re-read your first,your second, your third,look for your small xx,feeling absurd.The codes we sendarrive with a broken chord.I try to picture your hands,their image is blurred.Nothing my thumbs presswill ever be heard."Text

When did your namechange from a proper nounto a charm?Its three vowelslike jewelson the thread of my breath.Its consonantsbrushing my mouthlike a kiss.I love your name.I say it again and againin this summer rain.I see it,discreet in the alphabet,like a wish.I pray itinto the nighttill its letters are light.I hear your namerhyming, rhyming,rhyming with everything."Name

I found the words at the back of a drawer,wrapped in black cloth, like three ringsslipped from a dead woman’s hand, cold,dull gold. I had held them before,years ago,then put them away, forgetting whatever it wasI could use them to say. I touched the first to my lips,like a pledge, like a kiss,and my breathwarmed them, the words I needed to utter this, small words,and few. I rubbed at them till they gleamed in my palm –I love you, I love you, I love you –as though they were new.

We will tire each other out, making our homesin one another’s arms.

Not a red rose or a satin heart.I give you an onion. It is a moon wrapped in brown paper, It promises lightLike the careful undressing of love. Here. It will blind you with tears Like a lover.

Love’s language starts, stops, starts; the right words flowing or clotting in the heart.