I keep imagining this moment will come,
shapeless and desaturated,
loose from any lines in my head.
In it, you look up from your homework,
or your work-work, or your phone-work
and want to kiss me.
Then they will come in waves,
in volleys, like cannon fire,
gunpowder bursts and earthquakes
only interrupted to keep from suffocating;
open lipped and open palmed,
reaching deeper through each other
with our lungs, caught like cotton
in the bushes.
This morning, while you were in the shower,
I laid your clothes out on the bed
because I love you,
and when I was in the kitchen
you came out and saw it
and said, “He loves me.”
Some things come to us in a rush,
a windfall thrill after a swipe right,
a voice directed at us in a noisy bar.
We are unprepared for them,
they are unseen, and the shock
can overflow with new desire,
a bright well in the darkness, we fall in
and drink their kind of truth.
We are not like those.
We are not new. Not unknown.
Not overwhelmed.
What we are has taken a decade to become,
as everything else has burned away,
now only these remain:
A dark purple soil. A clean field of summer.
Blood. Flame. Arrows and swords
like flowers.
