Five Reasons I Love You

Machine gun thoughts rapping out a stark staccato tap
Of clinking gears until your whirring mind kicks in
After the java high, and I watch you turn away,

Deliberately), for your city is paved in grime and justice,
Something I cannot separate from flesh and blood and thought.

I love the way your smile is always a surprise
As though it must get the jump on you to come,
But you tease me lightly any time you have the chance.

You pierce me with your gaze, storming as you realize
I am holding in (sometimes) a smile because
You are fathomless, because you are storms and secrets;

Secrets don’t have to exist for me:
You are a stormy ocean I could read, but I promised
Promised myself ten, fifteen, twenty years ago,

I would ask before sea diving into a friend.
You remain a pathless sea: I love your storms.

I love the way you say my name—Catherine Elena April,
Catherine Elena April—how you use it all
(To you I am unique from all the people

I have been, become, pretended to be
With everyone else around me),
As if by the way you say my name—Catherine

Elena April—caressing in Latinate tones,
You will spin with me in the dance
That keeps me beyond your reach like silk;

As if by the way you concrete
My abstraction into definite points—
Catherine—discrete, that you will capture me.

I like how you get around to the words,
“I love you,” because I need to hear them, but

I love the way it takes you so long to get there:
Your piercing gaze that follows me about;
Thumbs digging into my hips to arrest my motion;

Three syllables of my name, softly admonishing,
As though I would otherwise somehow forget
That you are the only one who ever calls me that;

You let me be a woman, hurting, but do not reach
To hold me until I tell you, “Rede. I need you,” then
Do not speak if I cry until my tears are gone;

And in our own words that only make sense
To me and you: “I love to laugh with you.”

And this is my fault; I am to blame,
For I have been burned and told you not to put in words
That maybe it was more than laughing with you I loved.

I love the way you came to me with two names,
Already yours, so I can separate out the Marc
Who treats me with tenderness when you can

From the Rede who pierces with instincts
Never less than the cop that you have always been
And stares unflinching, unintimidated into my angry

Sea of thoughts and words and flesh and blood,
Who has never broken what trust I have given,
Who does not like the taste of coffee but drinks it

Anwyay because you need the caffeine:
In the same way you do everything else
That needs to be done—unflinching.

I will say it in another way, another tongue
That you and I have always understood:

Rede, with your keenness in grey eyes,
Whose storms defy my mind in staccato bursts
Of machine guns clinking like gears and whirring

With the greyness of a grime and justice-painted world—
Marc, who treats me with tenderness, holding not
And not saying, “I love you,” until it needs to be said,

Whose smile takes me by surprise and catches me
Smiling because we are both inscrutable and that
Is what makes us work, who calls me by names

No other calls me—Catherine Elena April—Marc
Rede, I love to laugh with you.