True

That I loved you even in childhood
at an age when I still confused
dust with grief, rustling leaves
for whispers.

That I wrote your name in notebooks
and on the underbellies of playground
slides, that I carved you into my
flesh with a pin dipped in ink.

Where differences flourished
in terms of peoples' lives but mainly
their purpose in life, I used my time
between childhood and madness

to express this need, informing the trees
with my pocket knife. I was nagged
through every school day by love's
bitterness and by its dynamic wings.

That I love you still, regardless of who
it wounds, shamelessly. And that I
will continue to love you the rest of my life
and when I enter into that other life

where everything is mute, by the immensity
for all that I was, I will love you
until all the world closes in on itself.
Listen, you will be dead and I will still love you.