Letter to a Temporary Lover

from a young poet. It is a fitting thing,

though it is a strange thing. To love

knowing the end is inevitable & coming

near is like writing a sentence, every one

of which ends with a neat black period. 

I can foresee that deep black period,

the shifting dark fabric of my life’s lens

which will erase the temporal window 

of this current period of loving you. 

Sometimes I look at the old guitarist

who hangs morosely on your wall &

I pity Picasso, with his period of mere

blues, when there are far more colors

in the ever-expanding universe than that, 

all of which are attainable & paintable

when one’s eyelids are brushed 

with a kiss from a temporary lover.

Yet my pity for Picasso is impermanent.

But then, in the context of forever-

expanding universes, all is ephemeral, 

all love & all art. Picasso, for example, 

knew of all other colors, all of whom

murmured behind his eyes & long palm

untouched as he carried on carving 

life in blue, the way my heart, having known

you, will continue to echo cavernously

even after your love is chiseled out

from the other crevices of me: 

my mind, my soul, my fingernails, etc. 

& yet Picasso chose to create infinite

beauty in one color. To create infinity in finite

realms. Even when my life is awash

in the apathy of that dark black period, 

it will have contained infinity at one point—

it will have experienced this eternal love 

through you, dear temporary lover.

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