You lent me your skin, when mine was too thin.

I don’t need an excuse to write about love, but I’ll take the excuses too.

I don’t need an excuse to write about love,

but I’ll take the excuses too.

Happy St Valentine.

Japanese love theory beholds a belief that lovers whom discover a soulmate in one another are tied together by an invisible red string— a string that may stretch or tangle, but never break. It is believed that the two people connected by this invisible string are destined to find one another and fall in love.

Here’s to love,

a story in its honour,

from me to you.

xo

---

If this poem were a song, it would sound like this. Listen with the reading, or soon after.

---

You took me to your parents house for dinner,

your Dad, a maker of habit in the art of perceiving others,

I remember his attempt of me—

and after his curious investigation,

he landed upon a discovery,

something harmonious

about you and me

and

how

we

would

so

beautifully

be.

My heart,

hungry for truth and flowers,

yours,

wanting nothing more than to give all of its

big

bright

love.

I’ll never forget those 

dark 

dark 

nights, 

I remember thinking, 

this place has no end. 

You loved me 

out of it

over it,

through it,

til colour returned to my soft skin.

Earthly love, 

showing me earmarks of the eternal.

You lent me your skin,

when mine was too thin,

you held me tender,

you loved me brighter. 

I remember a time before you,

writing you to life

and while eating breakfast at sundown,

I wrote again, in my little note-book of tensions

my heart catching a bad bad case of love—

I remember telling my sister about it,

that love had taken over my entire body,

but to whom the love belonged

I did not know.

A few months later

at the lake house,

my heart caught that bad bad case of love again,

but this time

there was a face to which the love belonged—

How recent that day feels—

arriving with that silly boy,

you running out from the house towards me not even trying to hide those bright sparkly eyes…

and I knew right then,

that I loved you back,

and that things were about to get beautiful,

magnificently

beautiful.

Perhaps it was your soft consonants,

your longer vowels

the lack of ambiguity found in your beginnings and ends—

your safe safe love…

found in the knowing of your yes

and your no’s too,

meaning only what you said,

saying only what was true.

Putting toothpaste on my tooth brush most nights,

leaving it to wait,

over and over finding me like a love-note—

lipstick on the mirror in italics “you got this”,

Black texta where the mirror of your car sun-shade should have been—

“Sorry no mirror, but you are beautiful”

a glove box full of strawberry gum because you noticed I liked it.

I could tell, this was the unfolding of your dream come true,

it’s was your seriousness about love,

it’s how I know, 

it’s how I knew. 

I’ve never felt so safe to change.

And now I tell others,

to consider such a countenance

when they find themselves kissing a heap of frogs, just to find it.

Do you feel safe to change?

All these rivers

and your love found mine,

money not our Shepard

and neither is the time.

Art in our hair,

poetry in our shoes,

ornaments in the sky,

pink lavender in the moon.

They say there isn’t “the one”

but

there’s

only

one

you.

This is where I always want to be,

with

you.

You lent me your skin,

when mine was too thin,

you held me tender,

you loved me brighter. 

---

I hope you enjoyed this reading moment, below are some other pieces that hold hands beautifully with the one you have just partook,

Happy St Valentine.

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xo

Love between us is speech and breath. loving you is a long river running.

—Haiku [for you] Sonia Sanchez 1934 .