FREED VERSE

Too-bright sun is ironing my squint-induced forehead wrinkles into place. The Pacific blues are more violet than usual and sprites of white light on the water's silken surface are dancing for me. Being motionless here would have once been unbearable. I did not want to live in art, only become it. But the dripping sun and the melting breeze drown me, and though my lungs are filling I am no longer afraid. This is a honey ocean I do not try to swim out of.

It's similar to what I feel for you. It's not diluted, distilled, tempered or vicious. It doesn't eat me from the inside out or burn my flesh until I am nothing but a bleeding, bloody heart. It doesn't entrance me into an endless sleep, waiting to be awoken by
 
    lips drenched in stardust.
It's not diamonds' glimmers nor the sugarplum daydreams I've always imagined sinking my teeth into. the ones I wouldn't mind getting my chin sticky for.

All this it is not, but I cannot say what it is; perhaps just maybe the caramel steam wafting above my french press on a sunday morning, the kind I can only see by the light of my kitchen window's sundrenched cross stitch. the lingering sharpness a sip of cold (not ice) water leaves in my ears, a freshly-washed raspberry on the tip of my tongue whose juice has barely started leaking onto my tastebuds. tart.

or it could be crows' feet next to my eyes and dimples I can't stop from digging into my cheeks while I close my eyes on an aging bench, taking in the December sun and thinking of you.