“LOVE” UNSPELLED

No roses smuggled in the sleeves of a lie,

I will not woo you with smoke.

no oath that mistakes possession for promise.

Come closer. I’ll show you the gears the word hides.

Call the first gear hunger: the bright, salt heat

that pulls tide to shore and mouths to mouths.

It is clean in its honesty, wild and finite,

a spark that does not apologize for burning.

Call the second a hand held open:

the quiet urge to lift the fallen cup,

to cool a fevered brow because pain is pain;

no contract required, no altar owed.

Call the third a key you give me:

your name placed in my throat like a houseplant,

a small, living thing I vow to water.

This is trust, the strange selection of one.

Now watch the priest and the poet arrive.

They braid the three and christen the rope “Love,”

sell the rope as sky, the knot as destiny,

and teach us to kneel before our own hands.

But tonight I refuse the costume.

Take instead what is real and radiant:

my hunger, unslandered; my mercy, unowned;

my key kept carefully where I keep breath.

If you want the spell, I cannot give it.

If you want the sum, I am already here:

Hunger to meet you at the door,

Mercy to bear your winter,

Trust to leave the door unlatched.

Choose me without the incantation,

and I will choose you in the daylight where math is honest.

We will be two nouns that do their verbs,

not a single myth that forgets its parts.

And if you feel your pulse answering now,

ask yourself—did I just court you,

or did I show you the lock picking itself,

and leave the key in your open palm?