This isn’t the I love you I want from you,
nor the I love you you want from my mother.
This isn’t the obligatory I love you too,
like the refrain of a dead-end street,
though surely there was a sign warning you
near the distraction of a wooden swing’s yaw.
This isn’t the I love you I feel when I see it:
your crushing on your best friend when
in her red dress she carries too many bags
in from the car, her perfect bird-weaved hair
never not smiling for the camera
in your never-not-loving hands.
This isn’t the I love you a pet owner jiggles to his pet
like keys to a much bigger understanding
of the relationships between angels.
Summer, I love your budding leaves encroaching
on our takeout dinners, on us buds
loving in burgeoning goodbyes, but it isn’t that either.
What it is is a good and tired kind of love
after what feels like years swimming across a lake
watching her, their, amaranth mystery taking wing in the soft water
and thinking this is my we when dancing
with Kate Bush and speed and wind,
waiting all car ride long to tuck in her tag, to touch her skin
with purpose, like closing someone’s eyelid,
knowing that hiding may be the easiest way to rest.
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