THUMBELINA

I am so thankful that your mouthful of 88 piano keys

charmed itself into my ear.

I am so lucky to have a handful of chocolate brown hair

in a bushel,

bunched up,

brushing my fingertips when you lie in my lap.

Your mouth slack and your pink lips parted ever so slightly.

Your rose-colored cheeks

and green eyes

and tan nose

and chestnut freckles

and blue-violet veins beneath the skin;

all the good colors of some angel

in a Renaissance painting.

Your eyelashes so soft and long

I close my eyes

and imagine them

brushing up and down the lеngth of my body.

If only I could be so small

to lie in your eyеlashes

as a hammock.

Swim in the whites of your eyes.

Dive off the Cupid’s bow of your lip.

Hang with two hands

from the corner of your smile

like Peter Pan from a clock tower.

Dance and splash

in the tiny brown puddles

of every single freckle.

Crawl into the lobe of your ear

and hide in the seashell cavern

where I can hear the ocean

and whisper it back to you.

Your face brings me all the joy of the entire world,

right to my bed.

Right to my hands.

Right in the breath like a tide in your chest.