Love and encounters

Love, that decision to find one anotherand learn to truly see each other.

How many times have I looked at youwith the intention of being present?

Even so, I arrive with my whole life as a filter.I see you, recognize you, and at timesyou become a complete stranger to me;at others, I see clearlywho you are and what you are capable of.

You are beauty made an offeringsimply by standing before me.

We will meet in each other’s gaze again and again.Sometimes our eyes will meet; at others,we will simply look away, distracted.

We avoid each other’s gaze, again and again.We regret it, look back at each other,and for an instant, we meet.They are only glances, without eyes that truly meet.

Again and again we will try to look into each other’s eyes,believing that is where we are,only to discover laterthat we avoid facing one another.Between moments of looking, we live each other.Sometimes we do not even notice what we see;at others, we lose ourselves in the void, in nothingness.

Nothing I say or do matters to the earth or the sky.They exist beyond my disturbances.

They matter to me, and they are a guide.Only a sign. There is more road ahead.

If I must die of love,let it be from a well-aimed arrow.

Should I be struck by mistake,I will celebrate even if that love is not mine.

I will live that love and die so I may remember it.

I share my words with youand watch them fall like stones into a bucket.They slowly sink to the bottom, but they fall.They pile up, one after another, down below.

When I say them to you,the words make that distinctive soundof a stone breaking the surface of the water.

It is a deep sound announcing the hollow it makes,splashing a little, raising a crown around itselfbefore finally settling into the bucket and touching bottom.

I share my words with youbecause I believe they will resonate in youas deeply as they resonate in me,but no, there is no reason they should resonate in you at all.

What do words matterwhen they grow old the moment they leave the mouth?Words that never travel farbecause they remain drowned, piled one upon another,to tell a different story.

A very different one,where they need neither make sensenor resonate in anyone.That is why I am here: to know that I can speakand say everything and, even then,know that my words do not travel far.

They fall away, lost, and tell something else.

Facing one another,looking into each other’s eyes.

In silence we look at each other from afarto know that, although we may stand there alone,we are not.

We are together despite our differences,the distance, our beliefs, our own prejudicesand the limits we impose upon ourselves.

We are together, facing one another,even when it does not look that way.

Finding one another and learning to truly see each other—how many times have I looked at you with the intentionof being present?

Even so, I arrive with my whole life as a filter.I see you, recognize you, and at times you becomea complete stranger to me; at others, I see clearlywho you are and what you are capable of.

You are beauty made an offering simply bystanding before me.

I love you, but I love you with the sound of another language:“Je t’aime.”I love saying I love you even when I do not,for the sheer pleasure of imagining that I love you.

Yesterday I heard a few words with that soundand could not help thinking how different it can beto say something so simple and feel it so differently.

The mouth, my mouth, puckers as if to offer a kissand then draws back, finding the space that came beforethe intention. “Je t’aime.”

I love you, I do love you, “Je t’aime,” even though you are not here.It does not matter if you are a shadow or a memory,a lost embrace, a breath drawn deeply.They are magic words, summoned from another land,another climate, another way of living together that matters little to me.All that matters is being able to say them and discovering how fascinating it is,especially when it is only that: an airborne expression,a futile exercise, an approach toward nothingness.

I laugh a little, imagining that saying them makes me powerful,capable of facing other worlds,of making my way through any countrybecause I possess the ability to say, “Je t’aime.”

Of course I have my own language, my own voice,the one that belongs to my family, the one I drank with my mother’s milk,in which saying I love you is so simple.But if I invent the thought that I dedicate it to you,nonexistent—or rather, faded into the days—then I can love you in your absence.I allow myself to dedicate the emptiness to youand imagine that, by saying it another way,the space fills with sound.My mouth moves, slowly wavering throughwhat those words urge me to say.I doubt I pronounce them correctly,though that does not matter.What matters is that I say them to you often.

If I say “I love you,” I feel I have lost everything—thatmy intention has become a label, a sticker, a cliché.A commonplace trying to be special,pretending I have greater meansand could therefore offer you, perhaps, a future.But no; the truth is, I do not find you there.

I liked discovering myself moving my mouthas though kissing you in the air,hearing only myself, accompanied by the daythat caught me playing in that moment.Today I can say “Je t’aime” again,even when it is not so.I believe the word will arrive one day,but I do not know.

What is ours would never work.I know, but how delicious it is to challengefailure and savor the moment.

May my eyes travel within your eyes.

Everything will look better from the prideand satisfaction that comes from seeinghow our decisions bring immense gifts with them.

I will be here, lost among trees,sunsets and the meeting of infinite roads.Trails without words or feelings,nothing but illusions.

I, who have seen you,watch you fade into the day.An absent encounter.

Once I wanted to know you morewhen all that was necessarywas to be present.

My muse is light.Her mere presence is enough.Sometimes it is her absence and distance;she is always my inspiration.

My muse lives in absence;her dark distancecan sometimes be quite timely,but never for my inspiration.

My muse is inspiration;her light, her presence, are enough for me.

Although her distance createsa shadow that reminds meshe is not the only thing I lack.

Sometimes I prefer to be without light.

Someone,somewhere,for a moment,an instant,will see me.

It may be fleeting,or they may spend a good whilecontemplating me.

Either way.I will be there.

I can write so many words,create images and tell stories,but everything acquires meaning whenit reaches your eyes and you hold itin your hands.

The moment I saw youI knew I already knew you.

I did not know how, but I was certainthat who I thought you werewas, in fact, a mistaken idea.

Today I know I do not know you,and I want nothing more than to know you.

I confess: I have lost love.I lost it in the days when wonder went unanswered,curiosity was forgotten, surprise missed its moment, andday-to-day life found only itself lost.

It is merely a way of saying that I lost love,because I know perfectly well where it is.

It is found in life itself,in the different roads,in willing tolerance,in the days when we are alone yet at peace.

Love is lost so it may be found again,so it may be spoken aloud,shared by the handfuland with closed eyes,even when no one is there.

Love can be seen in the eyes,in a smile, and it is also found in the void,because love leaves and sometimes returns.

I confess that I lost love,although I carry it here, draped upon me;all I need do is stop searching for it.