If I can’t be your love, then let me be a simple brooch so I may rest a while against your chest. If I can’t be your love, then let me be a forgotten coin so I may rest a while against your thigh. If I can’t be your love, then let me be an unlit cigarette so I may rest a while in between your lips. If I can’t be your love, then let me at least remain in these words so I may rest a while in your thoughts.

Do the lovers know that when they whisper these poems they are commemorating our love?Do they ever think of you and meor only of themselves?Do they know that I once found a strand of your hairand wore it around my necklike a necklace?That I kiss your handsmore than I kiss your lips?Do they realise that our love and their love are drops in the universe’s ocean of loveand that without any of these drops, the ocean would be less?

Make no mistake about it. We are born blind, deaf, and mute. It is neither these eyes that give us sight, nor these ears that give us sound. It is not even these lips that give us voice. It is only love. Love makes us seek beauty and truth. Love yearns to connect. To experience. To understand. So close your eyes at once. Don’t utter a word. Perk up your ears and listen to that silent sound inside you where all this is found.

How strange is it that our beloved finds its way to us in everything? The orange moon, a freckle, the smell of coffee—are all bridges to the one we desire. How does our beloved find us in this way? Or are we the ones instead who find our beloved in everything? Our intense want of them necessitates the nearness of them. And so we seek beauty only to be flooded with the beauty of our beloved. And we write ellipses on the page only to be thrice reminded of the freckle below their lips...

Do not go to my grave. Mary knows, I am not there. Look for me in between pages and on people’s lips.Do not go to my old school. Do not go to my old house —I am not in any of those places. Look for me in your hearts and greet me there.

I was mistaken when I said you live in my heart. How absurd I was when you live in my fingertips so that everything I touch is you. How foolish I was when you live in my toes so that everywhere I go there's you. How senseless of me to say you live in my heart when you breathe in my lungs, walk on my mind, and drink in my mouth. I came to pen another poem for you, but even every unwritten poem is you.