I didn’t love you
when I first met you,
I was just obsessed with your body,
covered by the elusive shadows
of the perverse joys,
enchanted by your long legs,
dazzled by your hair, black, long, shinny
blowing on my cheeks like a forest kissed by the wind,
I craved your thick lips,
tasty like the sweet juice of the freshly harvested grapes,
I filled my eyes with the sight of your breasts
made by a genius angel skilled at sculpting painful beauties
with his bare hands,
and night after night I was chained by an insatiable lovemaking
which asked for more lovemaking
in an endless, contagious ritual
I started to love you
when I let myself out
from my self-imposed cell,
from the sweet prison of carnal desire,
and I realized
that your sweat leaves a heavy odor when your body works hard,
and your skin gets drier and gets crinkly,
and your breath is heavy with the sour scent
left by the night’s constant wrestling
with the dreams’ dragons
in the zigzagged corridors of the sleep,
and your hair is a mess
when you wake up in the morning beside me
and you ask without words
to be caressed
and want me to tell you without words
that I need you,
that love you,
while your stomach growls like a hungry beast
I started to love you when I noticed
that you talk in your sleep,
that you let a belch out loud when nobody’s around,
that you puke with a grunt when you’re sick,
that you swear when you drive,
that you confront your nightmares without fear,
struggling,
fighting,
screaming,
that you become a bitch
when the hormones take over your judgment,
in the monthly ritual of renewal,
that you laugh with a shrill and you cry with a grudge,
that you’re scared of snakes, of ghosts, of owls,
that you could cheat on me,
or sell me,
or hate me,
or hit me,
or say no to me and everything I am,
but in any case
you wouldn’t hurt me
I totally fell in love with you
the moment I discovered
that both of us walk together on the same stone path,
made from the crumbling marble of the day,
jumping from year to year,
towards our own pre-designed destruction,
that we share the same space,
the same flight in the deep sky,
two travelers through the quiet tempests of space,
on a ship called Earth,
that we felt the same thirst,
the same strong desire
to be protected, lucky, loved,
the same chance to sin or be sinned against,
the same odds to be weak, or sly, or helpless,
the same doubt that there’s life after death,
the same certainty that there’s young and then old,
there’s life and then death
I loved you deeply
when I realized
that you are like me,
so much like me that I can look at you
and see the perfect replica of myself
in a mirror
