When I think of you, I part my lips
imagine breathing you in like
curls of smoke you exhale into my mouth
standing in your kitchen, huddled beneath the hood vent.

I want to take in all of you,
greedy to inhale your heart, mind, soul
your DNA
like the traces you deposit inside me
when I rock back and forth on your hips
until stars explode in front of our eyes
and there is no you, no me,
only this love we are cultivating—
galaxies of pleasure to be explored.

We know what it’s like to grow apart.
Can we figure out how to grow together?
Driving our roots deep into the black earth,
becoming one with the network that exists beneath the surface.
Can we nurture our love for one another in a way that
propagates a symbiotic relationship rather than a parasitic one?

If I wanted another child, it would be yours.
I imagine, with curiosity, permutations of our mingled genetic code.
But we are older, wiser now.
I want to midwife something that will stay with me longer than a baby.
A love that won’t turn 18, go off to college,
marry a woman with strange parents
start therapy and inform me that I am the purveyor of childhood traumas.

I want your mouth at my breasts,
you, entering my body, over and over
not a baby exiting once—
eternities of letting-go.

We have the freedom to choose
to keep tending this fire,
to keep nurturing these green shoots,
to keep believing it’s possible,
that enough fuel exists
to breathe one another in,
until breath stops coming,
our DNA mingles in the soil which grew our love
and we become the stars exploding.