I will love you for life
I will love you until my hair is grey and stringy
And my teeth wobble in my gums
I will love you until my knees crumble to dust under my own weight
And I clasp my pallid hands over a still heart
That still beats
For you
I will love you for life
But not a minute after
I’ll love you till marriage
I will wait for you at the altar
To steal you from your father
And hide you in my bosom and the crook of my shadow
I will meet you under the arches
To stop time
To freeze the tolling bells mid-swing
And suspend hard, uncooked Basmati rice in the thick, saccharine air that slides through the spaces of your teeth and gathers in the hollowness of my cheeks
I will waltz you into a reality that I will claim for ourselves to the tune of
Two children, a boy and a girl;
The girl older so that she can bully her bother
And 3 dogs
I will love you till marriage
But not a minute after
I will love you for a month
I will enjoy the long walks on the beach
And the late night mimosas on the sand
I will love you under the moon and tide
And drown in your sea
I will give you willingly my heart in my hands
To leave it at your shore to erode under your waves
I will meet you under the cabana and count our footsteps in the sand
As they tiptoe the tide and tickle the horizon
Here at the edge all worlds
I will love you for month
But not a minute after
I will love you till Monday
I will free you from your plastic cage
To savour the taste of your candy
And rot my teeth against your powdered sugar bulwark
Slowly, I will chew and slower still I will swallow down the memory
And slick you off my fingers
One by
One
Until the last morsel of you
Disappears
Down my gullet
I will love you till Monday
But not a minute after
I will love you till the morning
I will grasp twilight in my palm
And fashion it into a sheet
I will take a cloud for a bed
I will show you stars and we will christen them together
I will meet with you, the first kiss of the silky rays of golden sunlight torn
And surrender you to the whimsy of your
dreams
Then I will leave while the morning is still young
And delete your number from my phone
I will love you till the morning
But not a minute after
I will love you for a minute;
Love you like you have never been loved before
I take from you 60 seconds and return to you a lifetime
I promise you that in that infinite slither of finite time we will call our own
That if you would have me die, I would lay down at your feet
And rend my heart from flesh to silver platter
Garnished with the shreds of my soul
I will love you for a minute
Until one minute
Turns into two,
into three
And then I will forget you
And I you will never cross the shadow of my mind
Ever again