Modern Love

Have you ever read the column in the Sunday Times in the styles section called Modern Love?  I'm addicted to it, allowing myself to read it only after I finish the front page section and the Week in Review.  There I can find out about the woman who goes all the way to China to meet the man she's been in e-mail contact with, only to find out he's already in a relationship.  Then there's the mother in India who steers her daughter's marriage towards a man from the same village so she won't lose contact with her. 
   So here's the start of mine. 
    The cigar smoking owner of the florist shop convinced me.  "I've got them in the case.  I'll give you a deal."  That was how I ended up with a dozen long stem roses, far more flamboyant than the usual wild flowers or irises that grace my apartment. 
    These red roses on my dining room table carry the weight of blood, death, and the heart.  I visualize them directly entering my heart like so many thornless arrows.  In the twenty plus years I lived in Barcelona, on the day of San Jordi (Saint George, the patron saint of the region) I received a single red rose with a sheaf of wheat, the traditional gift for a woman.  The man received a book which always struck me as the better deal. But carrying the rose as I walked home from work, I felt loved.
     So this is the beginning- to be continued...

    And now directly to an end in line with the very impermanence of life itself:

Cut Your Losses

When I lost you

I lost entire cities,

ancient civilizations,

the crack of shard and bones.

I lost a language

taken for dreamspeak,

pillow fight love words.

I lost the shape

of a peninsula,

your indentation

on the mattress.

Fingers held apart,

filtering the world

in morning light.