Foreign Love in Amsterdam
I loved you
the way one loves
a cathedral with shattered stained glass,
not knowing whether light
would ever pass through again.
On the bridge at Leidseplein,
I held your hand like a prayer
I never dared to utter.
It was cold.
But love,
warmer than all the painted walls
of Van Gogh.
The tram passed
between us
like a final judgment.
And we said nothing.
Because sometimes silence
is all we can give
when our hearts
bear too many scars
written in dead languages.
We loved each other
between two stations,
between a promise and a “maybe.”
At Albert Heijn
I bought you chocolate,
and you smiled
as if I had given you
an entire life
in a green wrapper.
I saw you then
in the empty church at Nieuwe Kerk,
where a candle lit itself.
Perhaps it was for us.
Perhaps for those
who never learned
how to stay.
And now,
as the rain falls on the pavement
where we once walked hand in hand,
I miss the way
you held my silence
like a poem
yet to begin.
I loved you.
In a foreign city,
with a foreign heart,
but with a light
that came from Above,
from a place
where love
never ends.
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