I Love You as the Hidden River Loves the Stone

 

I Love You as the Hidden River Loves the Stone
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the bone.
I love you as the root loves the black earth
without ever showing its pale trembling arms
to the indifferent sun. Your name is a tide that rises in my throat
and I swallow it down, again, again,
like salt water swallowed in storm,
burning the throat, refusing to be spoken.
Your eyes—two wet stones polished by night—
pull me under where no one hears
the thunder of my blood against your name. We pass in the street like two strangers
carrying the same hidden fire,
the same buried river roaring beneath our skins.
My hand could reach yours—
oh, it could!—
but the air between us is thick with prohibitions,
heavy as wet clay, silent as graves. Yet in the dark of my body your body lives,
curved like a wave that never breaks on shore,
warm like bread rising in secret ovens,
fierce like the vine that cracks the rock apart
without a sound. I dream your mouth at midnight,
open, tasting of sea and iron,
and wake with my own lips bruised
from biting back the word
that would shatter the fragile order of days. You are mine in the way night owns the stars—
not touching, not claiming aloud,
but possessing utterly,
in the deep marrow where light never reaches. If one day the silence breaks,
if the repressed river finally floods the streets,
carrying our two bodies tangled like seaweed,
then let it come—
let the world drown in what we have withheld so long. Until then, I love you hidden,
like the seed loves the dark before bursting,
like the flame loves the wick it consumes in secret.
I love you without end,
without permission,
in the only way the heart knows how
when the world forbids it:
silently,
violently,
forever.