S T E A M

I am riding the steam of your words,

The subtle heat trying to warm the crisp, cold, crystalline world

Strangling the searing desires bubbling in our throats.

Here, in the cavern of your mouth,

Between the mountain ranges of snowy teeth

It is easy to forget the winter choking the universe.

.

I am riding the steam of your words to the next station,

Through the gaps of your smile

And the rough terrain of your lips as you laugh.

I am pouring over myself into the freezing expanse of nothing.

The empty city streets beneath a minuscule moon

High above, peering down at the unimportant things.

.

And then I am gone.

Shifted into something else, something wet and cold and dank.

I am the water beneath your boot,

Nothing more than a sad memory of broken promise

Thrown to the street to be washed away with the oil and rain.

I am cold.

.

The warmth of words never seems to last long,

Not as long as the nuclear reactions billowing high into the sky,

Eternally churning out warm dreams and desires.

Nothing is as endless as those clouds

And I envy their permanent dreaming status,

The way the concrete hugs them in an "o" the way his lips once did me.

.

I am forgotten now.

Bland, cold words seeping into the drainage system of the city

Soon to billow again out of grates and caps and manhole covers.

But his lips were nice.

They were hot with yearning promises and little quirky sentences

That made me think this steam would last.

.

I want to be warm again, to boil with affection and the fight of life.

I yearn like he once did to heat enough of the universe

To be witnessed again

But I hope with all the atoms of my fragile being to be born

In the center of some nuclear reactor where the heat will make me vibrate

And the steam will be eternal.