If I could count the ways I love you

I still wouldn’t be able to understand

why I can’t unlove you

and disentangle my soul

from the not-world we made

why I can’t flee from the sooty ruins and the smell of coals

and watch my burn fade

I still wouldn’t be able to un-learn

the heat from your palms

the shape of the space right below your collar bones

where i’ve kept an un-shed tear

every time you hugged me

Even when I can enumerate every single time

I catch myself soaring down the depths of an unknown canyon

like a wet leaf

I still wouldn’t be able to describe

how I felt when I caught a whiff of the perfume I gave you

as you walked by my side

The one I also own

With hints of osmanthus but not the joyful and crisp kind

The sulking kind, syrupy

Almost wine-like.

You smell like me

and my casked pain

that brews in the dark

after everything is said and brushed away

we now share a kind of intimacy

that counting cannot keep score for

like wine so thick you cannot pour

it runs deeper than a three Mississippi hug

or a five second glance

and the pain runs deeper than numbers could ever tell

because we are getting too comfortable with each other

and love grows to a gnawing hunger

but the truth will always prevail