Don'T I Love You? Poem by Michael Timothy Rose

[We lay back to back].

“I love you! ! ”

I whisper to myself like the lost and unspoken child now
who is unable to be loved. I am the Antwon Fisher of your
Heart. I whisper in the quieter silence to you;
I whisper against the inspiring press
Of your bony, so lovely, shoulder
Blades, and I do this, these
Light foot steps across cracked shells I
Survey a mile long, because I
Walk so long a creaky and wooden
Floor
In a house of echoes and of
Regret for what I might have loved, along a careful floor
Filled of splinters
I am afraid to replace into the ripped and rubber soles of our tremulous relationship
Because I can never tell you, not any lines of which I am afraid to speak, of which you have read if
You are reading these
Lines. This-
Line which
Evades the captivation of
Your touch.
So come to me,
Though I were the skin of your
Dreams.

(Though we are separated by
All the indomitable forces of people and geography and fear and past) .

Therefore, I cannot tell you. Not to-
Alter this final, final
Settling; Dusty legs is not preferred
When needs to walk along side of you
Or hold you
Cannot
Be met.
But dusting you and I like a clear glass picture
Of what remains my only lonely love alone
Has only shown
The deposits to resettle. Dust merely settles or resettles infinitely to infinity.
I cannot tell you, my love
Of love of loves, for silence is
Our only falsetto song,
For I am an
Unusual song of love, and, yet,
I cannot voice it to you
Even in a
Meager whisper
Which you acknowledge with a much
Softer kiss
Like an exhalation not
A kiss, except that I
Feel your -just- dragging lips
Like tree brush bending against concrete,
But I am not so hard, you know. Never, after so long
And so much effort to return these efforts
To the bodies, to nothing, to extend a sort of normalcy and peace
To ourselves!

But I can pretend to feel normal. And I will pretend.

So “I love you! ” I whisper to myself.
It ricochets and leaves markings on the walls.

Yet, perhaps it is all in vain, these attempts
To masquerade my feelings; it is difficult to not show
What exactly
You do to me,

If I were flowers, you
would be four seasons. I would
die and be reborn
in your passing and coming.

I think you notice, I still stutter breaths around you,
Still sink into short relapses of malaise, but sink
In your eyes and generally
Glow.

“I think I still love you, ”
An exasperated spill of air, like a fog, if you could see my breath.

To tell you what I would do, could never be enough.
But, I wish
You would rescue me from this self made process of reciprocate responses,
And say to me otherwise,
Say to me! “I love you! I love you! I love you! I love you! ” Quickly and without breath, or consequence,
like you whispered within my core within my ear the night in which you first told me you loved me. “I would leave this world behind in ashes, behind in shambles
If you beckoned me forward to walk with you
Upon grounds we,
Neither, understood the ending of-
Risks! ;
…even if you were fire, my love, I would walk,
fearless and without regrets.”

Is that not what you would always say in that moment of silence
In which we do no speak? Or am I so simple, so stupid, so sad, so pitiful?
Am I loved so differently?
Are you
the seasons masquerading as the sun, or the sun masquerading as
the wind, or the wind masquerading as the oxygen I breathe, or are you
nothing, this plea- means and is nothing. You are nothing; I speak lies of
a poet's adulterated passion? No, love! I!
Love!
You!

You need
To Love me too!
I Can't breathe when I say
that I need you to love me and be in love;
my breath stumbles over itself and I pause a key on the
keyboard I pour myself into
as though it were you, yourself
that I pressed these fingers into and
printed with these words, I love....

I need to hear
in my core aloud through space or a phone receiver
once again, even if it means nothing now
because we are separate, Lips of an Angel, I just need to hear,
need you to know yourself- that you do
love me too, that it rages and you put it down 'til it is a slow and soft
fire in you and you are able to move on. This admittance
would save my soul because, you know too,
that I have, after so long of waiting, moved on
with best intentions for your happiness and
my own when I cannot have you. And I am, after so long
of ill-sadness,
happier, now. But understand,

Serendipity has slipped into flickers of both hatred and hope and critical doubt within me, but I love and I love and I love,
and serendipity is stupid, so stupid, so stupid,
but these crevices of hope are microscopic in my DNA, but I
will always love you, they will not fade. Dark matter or a physical
Breakdown of my brainwaves in coma or in death,
could not take you out from me. Nothing will, so consider!
What I mean to you! Consider me! Because I
consider you-
Each
And everyday!

I strike this brush to the canvas
Or eat my cereal, caress
The memories of some
Girl I once loved
And loved and loved,
Still love

Like it were
An infinity; it is as though

An infinity has elapsed between us.
Life is not
Even an infinity long, my love.