Today, I crossed Scrivener Lane
alongside a Pieris Rapae
whose creamy petaled wings
traveled up Palmetto Street
with my steps beating
to the very rhythm
of her flap.

August holds the last of you
when Nuptial Molt
bore the Mallards’ fate
and the days when my body
ached with millions
of tiny pains
for you.

I root for paper memories
to remain one
with the windshield
now welcoming the day
the wind would take it away
along with you.

I’d like to think you wake at night
and think of me
only my mind is not as free
as you wish
and my fluttering
no longer concurrent
with your stride.

There’s something about
this vastness
that gets my mind
thinking of you.

Where sequoia dreams
and sculpted cloud oases
know your name
by the ringing of my own voice

like air guitar on the moon
…some kind of
ebb and flow drift
carrying your smile
along with the rain.

There’s nothing nostalgic
about us
but these floral pheromones
don’t lie
when married
to your addictive fragrance.

You sat so still for me
that roaming eyes paid
deeds for my heart’s debts
and winks for your mind’s
quiet stares of
selfless musings, painting
innocent romance
as a spine lying flat
on a mattress
or a quaint confession
born under your breath.

Any touch will linger
longer on my skin
than reason should permit
for I know not what
spring truly tastes like
in the palm of another
nor what this itching stirring
in me is to wipe the juice
of the mango
that cries so mournfully
down your neck.

Only, you came to my room
to talk about the moon?

Come around again, you
along with your mesmeric
force of a presence
that I deny any day’s
beginning without.

Yes, long have your sights been
clocked in on my hill forged
from the flirting temptations
born from my mind’s
aimless strolls erected
by your tongue’s riddles.

Please look at me, you
with your probing eyes
whose letters of desire
deceive even the wittiest of
my best intent:
to love your soured edges
that you wrestled down my throat
with the bitter aching and longing
of me and my sweet cherried taste.

Still, I’m up here swaying, baby,
with my ears plugged from
your shrieking lover’s cry
heard from the shallows below,
as this organ in my chest
beats with a melody
that better suits this number
I’ve so been longing to dance.

I swallow kisses
plucked from the vicious
allurement of honeysuckle —
whose arching twines flirt
a scent which I will suffer
the begging whispered
enticements of any day
so to bear the hairs of your
eyes quivering shut before my own.

How your sweet nectared
saliva seeps into buds of the
petals that stir and diverge
between our rows of
enamel magnetism —
that I do not know.

Understanding wanes
before your sigh of
cautious exploration of mine
and my shy acceptance
of your breath that drips
from slits only you allow
to escape from between my lips.

Flirting winks of
pigmented sunlight
fade into you and your
prickling being of
iridescent perfection.

Orchestrated madness
bleeds into this room
you encapsulate with
your eternal shadow,
baptizing eyes of marvel.

And I turn from this stool
of repentance and into
your wasteland of magenta
and sapphire beauty
where my lusts go astray.

Meeting the sun through
your potash and sand
permeated eyes,
muted genetics defy
their irreversible state.

And I dance here, in this space
between the sun and
my soul’s cast —
a margin of great expanse
bound only by the cames of separation.