If Only You Wish

•Written on September 1st, 2023.•

In the wind and pouring rain I wait

You call from the airport and say you’re almost here, sounding like you’ve been trapped for ages

The storm subsides just long enough for your arrival

I run to you

(My religion is my lover

All artists know what I see

As I kneel before the marble statues, muses long cold and dead

Each luminous, unshifting face is yours)

You look less tired in the rain

I feel less sad standing here

Watching you through the foggy windows

I kiss your palm when I return to you, coffee in hand

(The sky does not cry with me in the summer, it suffocates

All the fear and the fire of the end of the world, in burning lips

And ragged cliffs, I am saved

With skin and quilts I pray)

The nights are already shorter

Soon the light will prevail once more

But for you

If only you wish, darkness will stay