sort of close to my Run It To Ya

Your voice carries with it—

Rounds the corners and meets whatever at full height—

But when you add that half smile to it,

could envelope me in candlelit hibernation;

Warmth befitting the one you just knocked off their feet, I guess, as an apology.

Familiar volcano blood dammed beneath my jawline

that somehow breaks through in several places,

    mighty river of lava that deltas as it reaches the ocean,

    tributaries in the gaps between the mandible and the rest of my skull—

because I don't remember the apples of my cheeks ever heating to this temperature, this fast.

And just the momentary thought—!

But I'll just have to contend with the delayed arrival of autumn crisp, my favorite jackets, and dusty, narratively parallel* sunsets.

All the melodrama I've been writing into whisps of me—into cowboy boots, faun's hooves, angel's wings, the crow on my shoulder—

and I can't contain it, I'm sorry, I have a sensory thing with hot beverages.

*(If there is a better way to say "narratively parallel", you would know. And another reason to bury myself, the garden grows once again over me.)