Morning Keepsake

I wake where embers never died,

Still tangled in the sheets we made,

Your thigh a pillow where my sighs

Unravel every word we saved.

The sun, that jealous peeping thing,

Spills gold across your shoulder’s curve,

And I trace dawn along your skin

With fingertips that never swerve.

Last night you whispered secrets sweet

In languages no mouth could form,

And now your breath, a heated hymn,

Still makes my steady heartbeat storm.

You stretch; a slow and arching bloom,

A lazy cat in morning’s keep,

And I, the luckiest of men,

Would trade my dreams for waking sleep

Like this: your ankle locking mine,

Your smile of mischief yet to come,

The sheets a rumor half-confessed

Of everything we’ve yet to sum.

So let the coffee sit awhile,

Let clocks forget their petty pace;

The night was lovely, true, my dear,

But morning shows your sleeping face,

And that’s a feast I’ll savor slow,

With lips that know the road by heart,

From collarbone to pulse’s thrum;

A map I’ve memorized like art.

You murmur something half-asleep,

I answer somewhere south of words,

And suddenly the day begins

The way the finest mornings should:

With hunger, laughter, tangled limbs,

And you; my favorite way to wake,

My slow sweet burn, my endless ache,

The fire I never want to slake.