I Shall Love You Poem by Martins Akhoeneto

I shall love you
long after calendars
have forgotten our days,
when seasons have passed
and the stars have grown tired
of counting what remains.

Still, my heart
will know your name.

For love like this
was never borrowed from time.
It entered quietly
and made a home
where forgetting could not reach.

If forever should ask
what faithfulness looks like,
let it find me
still choosing you
after youth has faded,
after silence has taken
the words from our mouths.

And if life takes you from me,
I will carry your absence
like a second heart,
beating beneath everything
I cannot say.

When there is no tomorrow
left to promise,
and even eternity
has nothing more to give,

I shall love you.

Not because time remembers us,

but because
my heart will.