Heartmeal

This is how I fed my heart:
vodka soda, lime.
Chocolate fro-yo churned
with heath bar
and coconut, "What'll it be this time?"
late-night cafe guy would ask.
White wine in bedrooms, white wine
in the living room white wine
on the stoop.
My heart felt full of clouds.
Clouds would pass
and I would sleep.

It's different now, this sky.
Who knew—
a heart can be filled
with kites. Bouyant,
bobbing kites of bright
"I'm thinking of you"s.
Kites of calling back and up
up, into sun.

(I have heard
that this is what's referred to
as butterflies.
Before I met you,
I thought they'd died—
I thought they'd all but
disappeared. There was something
in the air. There was something
in the air, in my heart.)

A breeze now, and colors
fleck along a weightless
space; catching the light,
kites mirror glowing rays
upon the beach, a kind of fullness
of feeling, seeping under the skin
and through—happiness
(present tense): affection
finds and feeds you.

.

Know Your Own Velocity

There's this bridge that marks mile six and over it
and home is seven miles. Today I kept on going—
no ache, no tension, no fatigue. A tree-lined pathway,
ocean breeze. Nods of "Yes, this heat, we're out here"
from other runners.

I never used to do this, this madly moving
thing—heel to toe like a mouth over pavement,
steady as a motor into distance, electrified
like kissing in the car in the dark with the engine
on. Feeling thirst for what feels like the first fucking
time because I'd always confused it with hunger.
Embracing the belief that beauty has less to do
with bone structure than a weightless high
of moving forward:

redefining, limb by limb, the scope of every
stride, the why in an incline and curve. Each footstep
an imprint of a kiss into turf, toes kneading over asphalt
like tongues against teeth—this is making love
in the afternoon, 80 degrees on ecstasy.

.