heaven is

rainbow stained open window paned showers after lingering wind-dance runs.
chocolate and cherries with bitter amber chasers.
marshmellow lips, slow Sunday morning post brunch parking lot shared kiss,
leisurely sinking into the Universe,
deep into hearts and windows down
no music for once- letting the rhythms and noises of the world soak into skin, reveling in them,
Full
to the brim.




The woman's feet pounded the amber gravel ruthlessly, crunching and grinding out invisible patterns, gesticulating, lingering and sinking into the sun baked grounds.
Her soul was laughing loudly, with dignity but without postulation; her blood was singing in her veins. She was on her second circle, round two of her late afternoon run through the quiet, rustling woods. She had already stopped at an old abandoned amphitheater to have tea with her own mind, who had expressed its belief that yes, it was about time. The earth had murmured to her through the eaves of the concrete, ivy, and Frisbee golf sites scattered like sporadic sunken treasures among the alder trees. It had said, you're home now, you have found your place, and it is everywhere; you belong here. With me. By his side.

The sunlight was filtering through the bramble of tree branches, and the humidity that she had felt sink into her skin upon entering the outside air was now being swept away by whips of wind from the Northeast that brought cool tumbles of clouds. She sucked in air gratefully, feeling it slide down her throat and fill her lungs like water, cleansing and nourishing, panoptic. Musical eyes soaked up the birth of light all around, suddenly coming to rest upon a small, lone bell-shaped bloom off the beaten path. Stopping in her tracks, she stood and stared, unmoving. The forest was still suddenly, motionless, and the clearing that she moved off the gravel to step into was a dreamscape of earthen browns, mottled grays, subtle greens. The only vibrant splash of color, standing tall and proud, stately, autonomous, was this little gem of blossoming sienna-red floret.

Her feet crushed leaf crumbles and brackets of dried thicket as she wandered closer, curious and enthralled, humbled by the beauty and mesmerized by the underlying flow of energy, the intimation beneath the surface of unbroken flesh (browned by the summer). She felt spiderwebs brush her flushed face and did not care, did not move to pull them away from her sticky skin or damp, tangled hair. The woman saw him there, saw him in this flower, hearty and courageous, alone but bound infinitely to everything surrounding, with nature and immeasurably one with the world. She bent down and kissed the garnet petals delicately, eyelids fluttering shut and yes, yes she could see, feel his lips enveloping her own, plushy and vastly searching, loving and sultry. It was as though her downturned face was really meeting his own upturned mouth, silken and pliable and feather-soft. She lost herself in this moment of daydream bliss, on this hidden island in the foilage of heaven, and forgot who she was for a moment, knowing nothing but the inward growth of soul and merging of magics.

When the woman's eyes reopened at last to allow the scenery to permeate her sight, her mind once more, she felt herself melting and transuding into the terrain, sweaty and complacent. She felt another presence suddenly, as though secret eyes were following her every nuance of movement, and she turned instinctively, calm but still sentient. No other being or mammal was anywhere to be seen, but her eyes seemed to float instantly over to the source, the essence reaching out to her through the caresses of eternal spring. Another sanguine, cardinal colored flower grew a few yards away, dancing gleefully in the tempering currents, independently evolving, divine and prospering.

The two blushing scarlet jewel-blossoms were saturated with virility, regardless of their solitude, and their auras fed off of one another, salubrious and wholesome. The woman could sense an invisible symbiosis vibrating in the air between the pair of breathing, propagating metaphors- a tacit juncture that was more alive than anything perceivable by time. The union between the secular spheres of the isolated flowers was fertile, lush, and the woman was moved to tears. She stood there momentarily, feeling it roll over her body in fragrant waves, lulling her spirit into a state of quiescent tranquility she had never known before or imagined to exist. She acknowledged it with a smile, then continued on her way, newborn and overflowing with raw bliss.

She stopped once more, further down the path, and kneeled, everything within her laid bare, and lowered her forehead to the rock strewn turf, resting it there for a moment and breathing in the thick earth where the soil was turning and the pebbles warming. And from her subjacent position, knees scraped and sullied, the woman expressed her thankfulness fervently, only lifting her gaze to collide with the sun's rays, staring into the lustrous voltage with hungry, open eyes. And she knew it, just as she knew the burning orb would rise every dawn until the day it burst and shattered in the sky, spewing the beginning of the end in the form of utter darkness over the forsaken lands. She felt it flood her and pervade every orifice and stoma with trembling shocks of cognizance that felt a lot like thunder bolts- out of the blackness, out of endlessness, out of the thick and anxious silence like an admission spoken unexpectedly into the motionless, meaningful hush within a lovers' car ride home.

When she rose again, everything was illuminated. She began to run, run back the way she had come. As tides turned and tossed and maneuvered tectonic plates, all the while whispering her name and reaching out to her from provinces away, a longing grew and crawled, creeped up the walls of her consciousness, and she wanted to run and run and run until the sea enveloped her aching feet.

She spoke his name aloud. She rolled the syllables around her tongue like sugar coated strawberry slices on a midsummer's day, and swallowed them, then spit them out once more, enunciating each subtlety, delighting in the piquancy. And then she whispered, spilled, vocalized, sang her secret into the bubbling gusts of wind that were flying alongside vessel and mind alike, sending it into the open with an articulate shove and a gleeful leap. The woman's expatiation of devotion was released with only the burgeoning branches of God as her witness, and she was satisfied with this. The overhang of unseasoned April overheard her admission, that she loved him, and later,when the day began to deepen and grow weary and heavy, like cumulonimbus cloud formations beginning to sprout visceral lightning storms, a spark manifested.

A fertilization beyond conceivable notions, unspoken and unbeknownst: a few days later, she would run through the same corners of the world and stumble across a third cherry-chestnut baby bloom, the offspring of two souls converging.