Coffee Morning Rhapsody

(Previously published in ESSENCE Magazine)

The feeling is that I have grown a second pair of eyes.

Behind or within the brown ones looking out at you.

A third ear and multiple improvisations beating through my heart.

This is my life sitting across from you

raptured in aromas of coffee schooled in Kenya,

the silk music of our nudity and the air of our modern ways

perched like sparrows chirping over the world’s glass-rimmed edge.

This brew is heady and the danger soothing as our nostrils

fill with the same bliss that kindling sex

has established upon this cool and fragile morning.

Stars breathe themselves to life inside your hair and laughter

as I watch the evolutions of constellations

patterned after our years together.  I am reminded

how much of me now lives inside of you.

I see my smile riding the blaze of a comet

traveling a slow ellipse from the sun

and moon of your breasts to the wisdom rising

in the center of your brow and returning to flare again.

When the cup in your hand shakes and your eyes lift

like wings made out of God’s prayers: I know

that you have entered my mystery

and found yourself there, and loved yourself there.

Strange to feel this way simply because the sun

is coming and I am swallowing undiluted magic.

When I say that out loud does it sound insane?

If I say your voice is an amber waterfall In which

I yearn to burn each day, if you eat my mouth

like a mystical rose with powers of healing and damnation,

If I confess that your body is the only

civilization I long to experience… would it mean

that we are close to knowing something about love?

Such is my life sitting across from you

raptured in aromas of coffee schooled in Kenya.

This brew is heady and the danger soothing. 

This peace: is fragile.