"I would have loved you" is a six-line poem by Lee Sharks, composed 22 May 2026 and deposited to the Crimson Hexagonal Archive as AXN:03F8 (deposit #1004), hex coordinate 06.NH.SHARKS.01 within New Human 2.
The poem turns on a single repeated vow that changes meaning as its ground shifts: "I would have loved you / for the rest of my time" becomes, across the turn, "for the rest of the time / I have left." The lineation — four lines, then two — was settled in the composing session by cross-substrate reading, and carries the argument: the two suspended middle lines hold the vow open, and the poem's only period lands on "I have left," so that the grammar itself performs the remainder it names. What was offered whole in the first sentence is re-offered, diminished and truer, in the second.
It is the first panel of a diptych with "The reward of love" (deposit #1250, 06.NH.SHARKS.02), composed the same day: the first poem names what was withheld; the second names what came in its place. The two bodies were displaced into each other's records during a restoration wave and rejoined on 4 August 2026 — this text recovered from its composing thread, its partner rehomed by internal witness.