More than anything tonight I want to give you roses. But not another’s words or laments. Not another’s passion. My own. To pluck a seed from my chest and bury it into the black fecund earth and wait for love to take root.

I would lay with my belly flush against this soil and whisper to the world in the ground below of you. Of your love. Your beauty – so wide and infinite, seemingly without end. “Everything dies”, I’d whisper, “but her untethered beauty. Stories of my brush with your magnificence.

Moments when time stopped to watch you cross the street. When the moment refused to move into the next because your hair fell upon your cheek and all the clocks alive in the world sighed in unison. My lips upon mud I speak of your laughter – like a lit match to gasoline – and your bright mind. Your dazzling mind. Your wild humour and impeccable grace. Oh. And the feral softness of your mouth.

“She is the sun on earth,” I’d say. “She is life-giving. Rooms come into daylight when she enters. Her voice has the tenderness of rainwater. Her hands, the miracle of undoing. One unbecomes in her presence. One removes all veils. She will strip you with her guilelessness. You become delicious and naked before her. You will leave but never go far…

Words like these.

My mind emptied into this moist, dark floor of the planet. My fullness shouldered by the earth. “Everything is for her,” I say.

Everything is for her. Let her have roses.