RUI COSTA, PIG-HEADED, ABOUT EVERYTHING Poem by Margarida Vale de Gato

It began with a mole next to your sunglasses, No,
the beginning was a margin at night where you wanted to teach me
how to spell out verses, No, restart: breakfast
in a small café on a long street with legs in the sea
and Dom Rodrigos bunched in lustrous wrappers on the table, No
it must have been only when we stretched out our hands they slid
and we bumped our chests together clanking you laughed I
made a fool of myself, Maybe it was there because we wrote about it
each one understanding in his own way just as it's always
been, Though I warned you at once that I had no hope
we'd ever coincide you thought sure excellent because
that way we'd constantly want to probe each other
always pinching ourselves to see where it touched
there in the depths where it hurt not to fit perfectly
together, Only that yes it's a privilege it happens fewer
times than we have fingers finding
someone who we want to keep beating as
you said you would do to me for a lifetime when you squeezed
the resistance of material below my arms, And it must have
been delicacy not to justify yourself despite the pride
of performing feats we never count the beginnings or the ends

so I'm waiting for you to show up behind an SMS with an apple
pie hoisted to your muzzle, That the game of making all those
important gestures in the doorway doesn't exhaust you so later
you freshen up like it was nothing and flee because your handicap
is smaller and your paws are bigger and you want to see other beasts full
of questions, If it was me I'd put on my Spanish dress and we'd whirl
away like successful couples among the bien-pensants excuse
me I'm going to go and write obscenities all over your books.