By Rohit Karir
Above your head are petals of clouds
soft like mascarpone cream
I like to bring down, drape you in them.
On top of a craggy vanilla mountain
is a mewing, balled-up Maine Coon cat
I gave you yesterday.
When you wear white and red, with beige danglers,
draw back your hair in a black bun, reveal the neck
I take the next step, not taking my eyes off you.
“I love you.”
“How?”
“You are never far in my thoughts.”
The sea of golden crystal lilies in the palm of your eyes
is why I have stopped watching sunsets.
“I pop up as a recent memory.
Will I, when I am a certainty?”
Honey over charcoal is the dawning sun,
seeping through the reluctant ebony sky
under which I search for your arms and kiss you awake.
Around the corner of your effortless hips is a valley
where I often take a walk.
“Men want to be in valleys. Typical.”
Swaying in your heart are white trumpet flowers
the irresistible night-blooming cereus
that emerge once a year and blossom in mine.
“Sound research. Yet you get me zinnias, carnations.”
Clay is the movement of your mind
savannah scorched by cheetah
that fills parts of me the world took away.
“No. I am a rabbit. I scamper, burrow.”
Soothing as the last wakeful moment
before sleep threads through me
is your laugh when you chuckle with glee at buffoonery.
Double is the size of my heart
when you lift those with bruises, burdens
melt, lend yours to heal, to lighten.
“Love, I am not that nice.”
Grace on your face is what I envelop
when our eyes meet and I wrap you around
like a winter shawl
and let our sighs rise into clouds upstreet.
“You rescued a puppy from under thorny bushes,
behind barbed wire.
Don’t let a ripple develop into a tide.
I know who I am when I take on the world with you.”
Shooting from your cheeks are sparklers of rose water
that die softly at our feet.