Stirrings

[Image description: close photograph of the vapour rising in swirls from a cup of hot liquid.]

Heather Katsoulis / Creative Commons

Stirrings
 

the fire red ruby grapefruit
rises over the horizon
sun technical in its dream color
shining through the window

you slowly wake
cream and velvet folded into swirls
beckoning me back
into capillaries that dilate and contract
inertia creeping through my spine

how do you smell like home?
does your pulse quicken?
you left imprints in the soft sand,
washing slender-lithe as you stretch
to reach sandy feet that walk the circumference
of desired ones

the rising dawn spreads
the creations of your psyche pour in my ear
as we recognize the planes in each others' faces
rays soaring through another orbit
the day’s heat rising and drawing
fluids, feelings long hidden
beneath the surface

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Dena Rod is an Iranian American writer, editor, and poet. They're a graduate of San Francisco State University, where they received a Master’s Degree in English Literature. You can find more of their work in CCSF’s Forum Literary Magazine, Endangered Species, Enduring Values: An Anthology of San Francisco Area Writers and Artists of Color, and the upcoming anthology Iran Musings: Stories and Memories from the Iranian Diaspora (Release Date: 2019).