Love Song from a Run-down British Port City

If you yearn
the brown-black of
the coffee-beads wild enough,
chances are, you would also
learn to trace the outlines
of the curse-words which
wrap my silence. Eventually.

The silence of the coffee-cups was mine to begin with.

Yet to figure
Out how to mould
the chisel lickerish-sweet,
you hid behind chocolotey
dreams. I wish we had known
cocoa-maps, once written on
skins, refuse to be erased. That easily.

Still-born rains,
unfinished leaps, memories
Of shipwrecked names preserved
under your sleeves. I was then
learning to leave behind the
caress of the rose-red
kiss. Tearlessly.

The spring hadn’t yet promised to shake the top of your sandalwood trees.

The rhythm of the
unfinished leaps was yours
and mine to begin with. What
else would teach me to refuse the
lure of the shiny little shoes
such? Narrow streets, my love, have
never been known to be kind to empty feet. Fortunately.

The chocolatey world was not ours to begin with.

Raspberry-red roses I
have always been afraid
of. No Little Tramp did
sing above the jailhouse
blues then. Navigating the
streets, we know too well, is
the hardest of all. Luckily.

What is love, if not opening to you the salt of my wounded knees?