Happy birthday

love’s a deep and glistening pool

with unknown bottom and cool surface

I could swim, tread water

or drown

I’m drowned...

my lungs full of water,

my heart, love,

my eyes glassed over

my body slowly, slowly slipping beneath the surface.

And as the sun disappears

gently beyond the silent pool’s horizon my body settles limply on a rocky floor

rolling, sliding, finally resting in the murk.

I am tied down by the weight of water,

pressed down by the weight of love,

and every molecule of H₂O is a thought of you,

surrounding me, enclosing me, drowning me...

 

You know how, when you stare straight at the sun,

it scalds your retinas and lingers, glowing...

I’m blind for days after seeing you,

your face burning, glowing, lingering in my eyes

I’m deaf with you loud in my ears,

your taste fills my mouth,

your scent, my nose,

my fingers itch with the touch of you...

I wake up driving, or sitting,

even making love, I suddenly start up,

shaken from reverie, memories of you fading to magenta.

 

There’s a glorious insanity

in the lives we lead,

a quicksilver romance

compelling in its movement

impossible to hold

bright and fluid between us...

I am mirrored in that undulating surface,

certainly distorted,

and yet ever new, changing second to second,

as unrecognized perspectives shimmer,

and familiar features shift.

In our eyes, the flame

dancing in the wind,

is whipped to a frenzy in your touch...

and smoothly burns to embers as we part...

never quenched, never consumed,

warming us in afterglow,

ready to singe us when we step too close...

love burns, and flows, and shimmers and glows

and drowns us in its seduction and danger

and feels so safe and natural and new.