A Whitman thing.

"I celebrate myself." I say it out loud, but don't mean it exactly. It just feels right in the moment, swooshing down the sidewalk on my bike as the sun sets in front of me. The cicadas and crickets and frogs join together to roar at me down this stretch of pavement. Approval, it sounds like. Applause.

I smile. Well, how about that.

"Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you." I think I might be butchering the line, but it's good. It's the gist. The bugs and amphibians agree.

Well, how about that.

I can feel something stretch out from my heart, a finally, a this is it, a here it is, a thank you.

If I could, I would throw my arms out and hug the air. Instead, I keep peddling, because that's what you're supposed to do. The bugs buzz out their applause. Because that's what they're supposed to do. A wasp nest hangs heavy from a branch and sways in the wind, but the wasps don't mind. They build their nest and tend to their eggs. Because that's what they're supposed to do.

The sun sets in brilliant fashion, and I just keep plowing ahead. Eyes up.

My tongue, every atom of my blood,  form'd from this soil, this air...

Well, how about that.

Old travels.

The arduous climb from shoulder to jaw --
slopes aren't meant to be ascended -- only
descended -- only rushed by the very shape of it --
a way to get from A to B, and quickly.

A nape-kiss snags on invisible obstacles;
the sigh that's found a home there, the orb of pulse,
the indefinable, the ungraspable,
the very essence of you.

Here is a place to live: the curve of neck, a place
to sleep. We trade from lip to skin to lip
to skin the kernel of what passes for love between us,
and stop --

the climb to jaw seems so long --
from here, the ridge still seems welcoming.

The inevitable settle of you.

Yes, this darkness tastes delicious,
the macerated cherry stinging through the chocolate,
the cloying sweetness clinging to the insides of your mouth.

Sweetness sours in the inevitable settle of you, deep and core-bound.

Say it and I'll bend like a heavy stem,
fall into sweetness, perfectly willing, and
you'll find me a happy cavity,
a start and a stop in the dark, something thick to swim in.