Where does love reside?

In the sweet sticky air, we share

mango wine and bright orange kisses.

Heat swells to match

and our cheeks are now painted

in shade “fire.”

In the smooth slink of a saxophone,

your tears do a dance in response.

Who let your heart move like that?

I say a prayer,

Thanking God for Jazz.

In get-together-rituals

soundtracked to belly busting laughter,

fed by the richness of a lover’s secret.

Whispers overpowered by a language

never adequately translated.

In intimate letters that drip

with so much life

and lust and fears and dreams and

we lap them from the page.

They leave our tongues

perpetually parched.

We will always want more

In a lush forest

that only those living 

in such painful dissonance

could ever be so silly to survey.

And we are too spell-bound to share

too filled-with-mango-wine

to remember how we got there.