I do not love you
Your ringing laugh or your big hair
Which seems to hold a thousand surprises.
I do not miss those times
Those wonderful, wonderful times when
We talked about anything, everything
In the back of my dusty little garage shop.
How could I have known that
That dusty little garage that means so much to me
Still had room for you—whom I do not love
Of course.

I wish the gears of my feelings
Worked as simply as the ones installed in cars.
I do not know what to say.
I am a mechanic, not a poet.
I do not love
Not loving you, not having the words
To say what I long to say.
Fear that my heart will be pushed away
Shattered,
Like the cases you so cleverly solve
Like the ghosts of a slashed mattress.

How I long to sing away the bitter
Notes of your past into a sweeter melody.
But people cannot be fixed
As easily as cars.
My love for you is a mystery
A mystery only for you to solve.
It is not like your other mysteries. It is
Plain, like the tall African grass that
Smells like bush tea and whisper hints
So loud. No longer can I be caged in denial—
Caged like a lion roaming the
Plaster white walls of his stubborn pride;
I do love you
Even more than the infinite expanse of the
Kalahari, the swaying olive trees of my beloved homeland.