How wow am I? How smooth? Smooth enough to know

that this video I produced of you eating honey in the middle

of a great field of sparklers is going to make you kiss me.

I don't miss any life, but the weather report tells me

today was considerable, and a shooting star just shot by

and your hands are already cupped about my ears, and I'm

dreading the next few seconds simply because they can't be

right now, and I guess that's all missing you really is.


And I will love your lips for making such beautiful shapes. O

a word we can't wait to get our mouths into. A word, O

an apostrophe. Any more and we'll start listing. The mourning

doves coo and twinkle the only song I could ever reliably play

on the piano. The light is crispy and hot. The light is a promise

made real on a bag of pizza rolls. I approach joy. I am warming

up to pleasure. I was just learning to pronounce the word

humanitarian. A tree spills over the sidewalk and I want to

know into what big cat's mouth were you born. Into what

fierceness were you born. Because, girl—you are legendary.


You are mythology. You are the stories I tell my babies

late at night to trick them into believing in a higher power.

In these holy moments, my dog lays into my hair, lays alms

into my hair. I don't get I's that aren't me, but that's really

a personal problem, and one I'll work on in the creeping blue

of this evenings' nightfall. And even though I usually prefer

to express myself through onomatopoeia, gadong-a-dong-dong

will never capture waking up with your little hand in mine.