Hopeless Romantic

They say poets are hopeless romantics…

as if hope were a defect,
as if romance were a wound that never learned how to clot.

I say the poet is a man
who listens too closely
to the way an orange opens in the morning,
to the small explosion of light
when you breathe beside me.

I have loved you
with ordinary tools:
a table,
a cup still warm from coffee,
the stubborn clock that refuses to stop
even when your hand is on my chest.

Love is not a fever!
It is a country.
It has borders made of skin,
laws written in silence,
and a capital city
where your name is pronounced
without sound.

If this makes me hopeless,
then let hope burn!
I will rebuild the world each night
from the ashes of your absence,
and call it living.

And when you leave,
because all miracles practice disappearance,
the room does not empty.
It fills.
With your shadow nailed to the wall,
with your voice hiding in the curtains,
with the bed remembering
what my body tries to forget.

I eat bread
and it tastes of you.
I walk the streets
and the pavement repeats your shape.
Even loneliness borrows your perfume
before sitting beside me.

Do not think I exaggerate.
Love is exact.
It measures the distance
between two chairs,
counts the seconds
between one message and the next,
knows precisely
how much silence a heart can carry
before it breaks like a plate
dropped on a kitchen floor.

If I am a romantic,
it is because reality is not enough.
Because the world insists on being blunt,
and I insist on touching it
until it confesses.

I do not promise eternity,
only this:
while I exist,
you will have a place
where your name is warm,
where your absence is loud,
and where love, stubborn and unfinished,
keeps breathing
even when everything else
learns how to end.