Your name, a fold creased
into my tongue—what followed,
naturally, I love you.

How to shake loose
what the mouth and larynx and lungs
know? To say little

of the brain, habits
of the heart. I let time
be water and sunlight.

Let spring and summer
come. Turned as leaves
at autumn’s center,

and still these letters,
still the habits of mind,
of hand, the sound

thin, thinner now.
Your name like a whisper,
some echo in the air.

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