Gaborone

The flags hang soft against
a quiet summer morning,
sweat already mixed with a strange scent,
not smog but spring, my nose
overjoyed at the sensation of smelling
what a fresh sunrise means,
after last night’s storm
washed the boundless sky,
blue and blue and blue forever,
further than you
can see or imagine.

Smell holds deeper memory still:
wafting through an old piece of music
about dreamers who live
the stories you sensed once,
lying next to me,
asking what it was to make a life
beneath the thing you love,
forever.

I gathered your face in my hands
and kissed you
and said, like this,
whispering the secret
against your neck
in a language you cannot hear
because it is made from breath
and heat and the play of lips on skin.

It is the vacant blue itself
which soaks our soul and -
written in the few clouds
whipped across it -
is the only thing worth being.

TRACE

City of the Sun