"Three words," you say,
"and why must you throw them
around and around
so carelessly,
pennies to a well?"


Please understand, querida,
that I do not know what love is,
could never grasp the citric sting,
the irony of locusts
that is this cobwebbed word.
I do not know what I mean exactly
when I tell you how I love you.


But explain to me this:
Why then, querida,
do my lungs quicken
upon the defiant incline of your head
when you hook my breath
with upturned lips?
Why then
do I inhale so deeply
when you pass beside me,
so that I might catch an
afterthought of you?
Why then
do my fingertips throb,
explode,
technicolor in your elliptical gaze,
when static must leap between
the tongue and teeth of secrets?


Querida,
I still do not know what love is,
not here in my prison of alone,
where three words are as hungered for
as an embrace on snowfall nights -
not here where I cannot
feel and taste and breathe you
and yet remember
why I answer such ridiculous questions.

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