I’ve been standing on dirty street corners
looking for a glimpse of green eyes,
that I will immediately know to be yours.
Or maybe they’ll be caramel brown,
or milky-way blue,
or winter-wolf grey,
either way they’ll be glittering,
two stars in a face I have yet
to figure out.
But your hands,
your hands I know.
They’ll be slender and careful,
calloused spindles of the finest silk,
that compose symphonies and build houses,
harsh and powerful as Shiva,
gentle and tender as Parvati,
whose love saved the universe,
or so they say.
My fingers know yours intimately,
though they have never touched,
and within your commanding arms,
I will follow you anywhere.
We will leave the city,
full of dust and air that
chokes,
and live among the cosmos,
swinging in hammocks hung between
constellations,
hiding in the curve of the big dipper,
shushing our laughter so the
Gods won’t know we’re there.
My pulse will jump and shiver,
my blood itching in my veins,
to fuse with yours,
because close is never
close enough.
The nerves along my spine
will know the sound of your voice
before you even speak,
by the way you draw breath,
unhurried so you can think about
what it is you want to say.
You will be careful where I am wild,
slow where I am moving too fast.
Your arms will hold me close,
and I will be still for the first time
in years.
But you will know how
to let me go,
how to let me
fling about the stars,
Swim up to the moon and nose dive
back into the ocean,
where I will live as a fish
for a day or two,
before I return, hair dripping,
naked as a mermaid with legs,
to my home in the center of your beating heart,
curled up like a baby in my mother’s womb,
because even wild things,
need to be protected.
And every night,
we will fall asleep in our safe-haven among the stars,
my body fitting perfectly in the crooked spaces
of yours,
and I will murmur love poems
into the crook of your elbow,
as you pretend to be asleep.
My heart already has the verses
memorized, imprinted deeper
than my mother’s face.
I whisper them now,
on dirty street corners,
my clothes ripped and my
lips bloody,
waiting for you
to take me home.