It is not nothing
that it’s the loveliest night of the year
I hear a melody from my balcony
—elsewhere life is exploding 
becoming stars
but all that is lost on me
I am here trying not to name this
How can I not say
that for me
there is not enough of you

I invent you
numerous times a day
practice not saying the words
as you laugh lawlesssly
and hold me in your solid livingness
yet each time I fall 
forever like a leaf
It’s become so hard
I blurted the words 
in a goodbye to your dog

It’s the loveliest night of the year
as I practice unspeaking
how to not say there was
whatever that came before
and then a life of possibility

Kamand Kojouri

“your mouth corrupts me
protests time
i found religion in those freckles
               & became a pilgrim
your infinite hands
        just so
meant for worship
come, 
        absolve me
               make me light, light”

Kamand Kojouri

“I don’t know how you carry
an ancient knowing 
or why you smell like starry skies
and church.
Everything is human nature 
yet you are supernovas 
piercing night’s heart
with your wounds of light.

I don’t know when you learned 
to dance with God 
or why you paused to witness me.
Everything is eventual pain 
yet you are time suspended 
and blessings
constellating. 

I don’t know why this had to be
or why it couldn’t be anything
else. Everything is an unbearable
burden yet here you are,
my universe’s 
Amen.”

Kamand Kojouri

“I refuse the definitions of love ⁣
in dictionaries and philosophy,⁣
for today I know love.⁣
I had sought you for years, ⁣
but find that you were always the seeker⁣
and I the sought. ⁣
I suddenly appeared ⁣
reverent before you⁣
to bear witness to your beauty, ⁣
to dance in your silky attention,⁣
but you were always my wild destiny, ⁣
my heart’s pilgrimage—⁣
the meeting place of all my joy⁣
and self-forgetting.⁣
When I first loved you, ⁣
life for me had just begun.⁣
I look forward to so much with you—⁣
our togetherness in a world of wounds, ⁣
our children awaiting birth.⁣
I look forward to so much life with you, ⁣
and yet, I am perfectly content ⁣
with this moment here.⁣
It matters not to me if I die ⁣
before finishing this poem,⁣
for today I know love.⁣
For today,⁣
I am free.”

Kamand Kojouri

“Try as I might,
I can’t write
you—it’s like
nailing sunlight
onto this white
page. I cannot,
for you are a dream
of yourself. You
who is my beginning
and my destination, even
my path is You.
This is Love.
But what is love? A silent
four-letter word,
when the music
of the entire language is You.
You see beyond me,
and into my possibilities.
But all my possibilities lead
to You.
For it was written that I
would love you,
that it’d be your destiny
to greet me. That You
would be my destiny,
and the rememberers
will utter my poems
only because
I loved
You.
Try as I might,
I can’t write
you—it’s like
nailing sunlight
onto this white
page. I cannot.
But reading this here
it is clear:
You are the poem
writing me.”

Kamand Kojouri