Is there a right time to say I love you?

When is the right time in a new relationship to say those three little words? If you say it too early, then the other person runs away screaming; if you say it too late, after they have just said it to you, it sounds glib and as though you are only saying it in return. If you say it to someone and they don't say it back, you sit, agonising with self-doubt wondering if you really should have said it at all but if you DON'T say it, then you sit, squirming with those three words squealing in one's mouth like a dog in quarantine just longing to be released.

This poem is about that feeling.

Phonology

I can feel it up against my lips
pushing up from my throat
on the tip of my teeth
vowels unvoiced and consonants unexpressed.
The long vowel, the eye of insularity, of islands
the space, the close of the lips
The tongue against my teeth, the soft l of lust,
liking and limbs, yours against mine.
Then o but not O as in Dido, the cry of Aeneas,
but o as in up, unto, us
then the fricative, not the f of fuck, but the v of view
as you are the open window of my closed room.
Magic e follows that transforms that which it ends.

We turn to the final fifth,
the y of ye, of yes, the gentle affirmation;
We have gone too far now, too far
to stop at our last dipthong;
the ou of doves, of passion spent
the boo of ghosts, of those far behind
and as I finish, I look down
too shy to look, too shy to see
the echo of phonemes your eyes shout to me.

Minerva