Confession, or Requiem for Freya

There’s a certain way to

voice it that removes all trace

of doubt:

I love you denotes that

you’ve been chosen; out of everyone

who's birthed; that I know of

seasoned ardour & its

heave; two clans who tug in

kilts below the boughs,

your name in orange plaid—

the hue of a lifting sun.

Your lambency aloft

beyond the rain.

I love you is stuck in self-

importance. A smug,

Earth-centric cosmos.

How honoured

you should be of

my devotion—as though each rose

a laurel—from the gardener

not the garth. Every drop of aqua

spawned of jug and not of cloud.

I love you is a nimbus’

restitution, dropping its

gifted plume—

as a pilot does a bomb—

in & up then down.

And yes, passion’s often such:

appraise the way a woman

laments the name of

her fallen son; the father who in

weeks will wet her coffin; and

the misty-eyes of Aspens,

mourning the passing wood

as much as we.

Andreas Gripp

April 15, 2026

RF Photograph