I love you as certain dark things are loved

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz

Or arrow of carnation that propagates fire:

I love you as certain dark things are loved,

Secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

Pablo Neruda - One Hundred Love Sonnets, XVII

Not understanding the complexity

of the human heart,

I learn about you slowly,

about ancient ghosts

who trouble your dreams,

who find vulnerable places

and replay them like old melodies,

music you only half-remember.

But I don't love you for what is Strauss or jazz;

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz

or care if the music is too soft or loud.

but only if your ghosts

can co-exist with, mine,

if this joint darkness

can carry the burden of two lifetimes,

or what more we may require

to embrace shadow as a form of longing,

to understand blindness as another way to see,

to know that the philosophy of desire

or arrow of carnation that propagates fire

can gather us into the arms of light.

I want to take your darkness into mine

so you become the wild in me

and I that quiet centre you cannot find

because its tenuous patterns are felt

as though your fingers were gloved,

the indistinct whorls of distinctiveness

carrying you deeper into uncertainty,

I love you though my love remains unproved.

I love you as certain dark things are loved,

past the visible, and with a knowing I cannot utter,

into the place the heart hears

the beat of other lifetimes.

I love you the only way I can,

where our nakedness is clothed

in penumbral shadow and the toll

of bells for lost souls

echoes the spaces between our words,

where silence is the way we can console

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.