Everywhere

Kiss me in the rain, Love, quiet my fears with the light in your eyes. Take me everywhere with you, tie my hand to yours.

I want to step on the grass with you, walk across bridges with you, wait for sunrises with you, explore the woods with you, walk along shorelines with you, get sunburnt in the sea with you. I want to kiss you as suns set, lie beneath the stars with you, wake up from a dreamless sleep with you, take afternoon naps with you, dance in the rain with you, look down at fluffy clouds with you, paint walls blue and rose with you, marvel inside art museums with you, have lunch in Prague with you, look up at the Eiffel Tower with you, enter Thai temples with you, twirl spaghetti in Italy with you, gasp at the Stone Henge with you.

I want to be silly with you, cry buckets over sad movies with you, leap over puddles with you, hide in the shadows with you, run distances with you, let my hair loose and be free with you, learn the constellations with you, read poetry with you, listen to guitar strains and drumbeats with you, slow dance with you, fall asleep beside the sea with you, get drunk in a bar and go home with you, spend lazy weekends with you, look down from rooftops with you, climb trees with you, visit musty, old libraries with you, walk down tree-lined paths with you, dance beneath wisteria-wrapped bowers with you, carve names and hearts on tree trunks with you.

Take me everywhere, Love. Or just somewhere. Because somewhere--anywhere--with you is everywhere.

Rain

How silently the heart

pivots on its hinge

- Jane Hirschfield

The night is full of sighs. Doleful, longing.

The darkness stretches on for miles and hearts shudder at the unknowns lurking in the shadows: betrayal, fear, anguish, sorrow. A question is tossed into the night: What are you doing tonight, Love? It boomerangs into an answer that tortures the mind, like so.

Lamps stay on in a paltry number of houses where Insomniacs go about their day, where lovers wonder about tomorrow, where the brokenhearted lie awake, weeping in silence, shivering in the aftermaths of rain.

Unwritten letters get sent out into the void, transmitted by cold air--messages that hardly reach those they are meant for, things that remain unsaid even as the sender hopes they had not remained unsaid until it was too late. And so the heart becomes a lonely prowler.

Tomorrow's weather forecast promises more rain, more gloom. The sleeping remain sleeping; those awake toss and turn in unrealized dreams of loss and regret, praying for morning to come, and yet wishing it would not.

Raindrops start to knock on doors and windows. Soon, the rain falls in sheets, murmuring litanies.

Mornings

I am roused by the sound of raindrops pattering against glass. Beside me, you are asleep, and I watch the steady rise and fall of your chest, your lashes black against the copper of your skin, your figure etched against the white sheets. I snuggle close to feel your warmth, willing sleep to come back.

Outside, it is still dark. The sound of your breathing is drowned by the rain and I lean closer to listen. Your breathing calms me. It assures me of your nearness, it quiets my mind. It reminds me that you are here, and I do need reminding sometimes, still.

I burrow my face into your neck. I drink in your scent and think of soap and water, young leaves, morning dew. You stir and I try to keep very still, hoping you'd stay asleep. We turned in quite late last night--despite you being exhausted, you stayed up with me as I worked on the manuscript I had been stuck on for weeks now. You talked about nebulae and constellations, the mysteries of the heart. I ended up typing them down into my story. Somehow, they tied neatly with the narrative. I sat, musing, wondering as always if you were the muse sent to me by the Greeks.

"But of course I am, Love," you, after I voiced out my thoughts, "what else could I be? Don't I look like a muse to you?" You grinned like a schoolboy and I tossed a crumpled post-it smack into your neck, laughing at the image of you as Calliope or Erato. "You look more like sun-kissed Apollo, Superman." I love how you never fail to make me laugh.

"So which is it? Apollo or Superman?" You put your feet up on the ottoman. "Ah, well. I guess I can morph into whoever it is you want me to be. Just because I can, you know."

Yes, you're magical, that way. But I keep it to myself.

Meanwhile, you wrap your arms around me, your eyes still shut as you mumble something about supernova in your sleep. I close my eyes and drift off into slumber, the sound of your breathing blending with the rain's.

Vessel

Hungry anchor to my mooring--

fastened, fierce;

glow of firelight clinging 

to surfaces, your skin 

on mine, your rage entwined

with mine, dancing flames

reaching upward, licking

the ceiling, flickering

against walls;

your eyes, dark sea of wine 

I sink into. I

shiver, my love, and you

brace me from below,

the sway of evening underway:

tide of bliss in motion, a rocking 

certainty--our souls

clasping 

into one.