When you read to me

When you read to me,
Your voice fills the room,
honey drips from your lips,
humid air heavy with meaning.

My lashes kiss butterflies onto your neck,
voice hitches in surprise
but continues the melody.

Your pulse under my hand,
where poetry roots into my skin,
whispers of breaths mingling,
phrases weave into my hair,
curls and refrains braided into yours,
my heart beats in iambic pentametre.

Another’s words, another’s love,
you touch me with verse,
– rhythm vaster than empires and more slow.
Fill me with that conceit,
let it drip from your lips
into my hollow bones
reverberating in assonances.

When your tongue gently brushes words
into my mouth,
I taste onset, nucleus, and coda,
let the rime mingle with your taste,
let the clavis fill my mouth,
embracing your sonority.

In your mouth,
the villanelle turns into nectar,
the sonnet into aromatic euphony,
your lips kiss chocolate into every trochee,
every utterance caresses my skin,
morphemes are estuaries of my body
and our lexemes intermingle
like my fingers tangled in your locks.

Enjambments racing under my
skin thin like filo pastry
metaphors throwing bubbles,
blowing holes, smoothing wrinkles.

I am drowning in hyperbole,
suffocating in the depths of an alliteration,
but you sweep me up with your halted breath,
give me a moment of respite,
then choke me with a simple simile.

Desperate, my hands reach for your shoulders
and find prosody and footing
in your steady frame.
Your pulse my metronome,
your eyes heavy with tropes,
breathing metre into words and me.

Anchored to you,
I let the stream of words
rush over me, into me, through me,
let the current take me to the edge
of reason

and finally,
just when I think I cannot take any more,
the book falls from your hands
and you reach for me, return my touch,
fulfilling the promises given and left
by your voice and
by the poetry.