Love

LOVE AS A WRITER

Love is both he and she,

she smokes a cigarette

he smokes a pipe,

She writes on a notebook made of gold

with the inscription ‘drive the sword of metaphor deep into their heart’

smoking her fifth Lucky Stripe,

He types away on his typewriter

the keys ‘L’ and ‘V’ don’t work

he’s okay with that looking at his black machine

with the monogram ‘God’s death darling’ fading.

She crosses her legs imagining other phrases

collecting the meter of loss, rhyming laughter with silence

in each stanza she erases each heart she possesses

nothing understood, her longhand unreadable,

He sighs, can’t quite catch the mood of the night

types away till his tabac is gone,

gets up, stretches, and tells her

‘I’m going for a walk darling’ walks out to darkness,

She nods, takes another drag

smiling she sits at his desk and fixes the keys

from the outside we peer up to their mansion

high up on the third floor a light is on

the sound of keys tapping heard, tapping out songs of sorrow

well into the evening

and in our minds we hear the script

begin

stop

love

lose

forget

forgo

move on

regret

begin…