And As Always

'after reading Neruda' 

I will give you more than
I can promise.  More than
this sunlight dancing in
the kitchen with our meal.

More than the dishes and
the linen and the forks
arranged like daggers to
the heart.  The flesh.

What am I, what are you
but a cast of memories,
a movie forever rewinding
and replaying.

What are we but quotes
and asides and flaws and
errors between one take
and the next.

What are we but one,
when everything else is
duplicity and misdirection,
a confluence of errors.

Oh, don’t ever forget that
this was probably never
supposed to happen, to
set like cement, to endure

while time erodes.  Don’t ever
forget that love is like a
falling star, brief sighting,
remembered forever.