French, they say, is the language of love.
I wouldn't know, for as hard as I try
I've never loved anyone in French
except maybe my seventh-grade French teacher
with her Audrey Hepburn hair
or that girl on the Metro one hot July evening
who spoke to me through her smile
as she stood waiting for her stop.

But my lack of fluency, in language and in love
never stopped me from trying
but practice doesn’t promise perfection
I might just as well be shipwrecked on Lesvos
a millennium ago.

Poetry now competes for love's honor
the heart vying to speak
where reason and prose fall mute
for I resist ceding to time's fading will
content to barter the ephemeral pleasures of the flesh
for those more durable in imagination and dreams.

"I miss you." three words oft met with silence
or maybe a reflexive "You, too,"
as the TV vies for attention
declarative ego laying bare
a presumptuous expectation of outsized returns
on such a small investment. 

"Tu me manques," say the French.
"You are missing from me,"
turning a casual statement into an aching abyss
echoing with the urgency of desire
only a false lover could ignore.

I should have studied harder.