What a Man Means

If a man says he loves you, know it is the river’s hunger for the warmth of a moon’s reflection— he seeks a moment, a hush of closeness, the breath between your words. If he says he is consumed, that your name is etched into the hush of his breath— it is the same longing, but now, he clutches it like a flame in winter, afraid to lose what has already become his thirst. It becomes the ache he carries quietly, and this is the old ache carried in every man’s bones— and perhaps, if it were not so, if desire had never trembled within this brittle lantern of bone, you and I would not have arrived here, in this soft dawn, still learning how to stay alive.