Belinda Nelson

Three Years: I am to always be here with you.

Even the days I was not (you were not)
Sufficed by the many hes or shes, lips for kissing
Or maybe, just once, settled for sweetness
Tossed around in my bed, (your bed)
Lead me (perhaps you too) to doors of salvation

But never apart for long to ask of me who I was, and once
Come after I'd gone missing in January, from last January
And was not around to hear you but
You'd remembered to always speak in French to me
So I could always return to remember to say to you
That you were still smiling and even after so long
Strangers melting together in summer's sun goodbye

I wanted for you to stop kissing me
Only to sleep in your hand with mine
To be too wordy, too distant
To argue, To agree on
The brilliance in:
sedation, grinding teeth, tired eyes, jittery knees,
Your songs and such that are not about me, and
Poems I write and read to you of January from last January

so far away is the plane you caught this morning
Too many states away are my hands from your hands
- What if we had not been lovers fighting against love?
I don't want to know
I am to think I would have lost when I did not have to

I am to always be here with you