Hot Cold

Today is my mom's birthday and I know I will probably fall asleep by the time she wakes up and that I might not wake up until she falls asleep. I was settling down in bed to watch a film, but I decided to wrap her present now before the sun rises and I forget. Mummy's getting Weleda Skin Food, the hand lotion she regretted not buying for herself last week, covered in old netflix envelopes that have been accumulating in a pile on my bedside table. I am so lazy. I should clean. While I was writing out a poem for her, "Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market," by Pablo Neruda (she loves fish, i don't), I was reminded of Neruda's other poems and how I haven't read them in a while and how his love poems are so great. Their relevance is so touching, I forgot about my mom I was so involved in my own life just reading his work for a while.


I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

-Pablo Neruda