These I Have Loved
These I Have Loved These I have loved. The first impossible sentence that looked back at me and recognized its accomplice. Libraries, where silence shelved revolutions between cracked bindings, where dust was merely the pollen of forgotten gods, where every overdue book proved that time, like language, can be negotiated. Ink on my fingers, the blue bruises of apprenticeship. Bars with chipped mahogany elbows, where whiskey translated grief into every available dialect, where laughter arrived wearing a black eye, where lonely men polished the same story until it reflected someone they almost became. The miraculous commerce of tending thirst, where I learned that every glass is a tiny cathedral of confession, and the best tip is the stranger who leaves lighter than when he staggered in. Women. Lord, the bright republic of women. Women who arrived like weather systems, who could rewrite gravity with a glance, whose laughter struck matches in rain, whose kindness could sand the sharp edges...
