us

We forgot to go to sleep

so we walked to the beach

and let the looping cicada songs

tuck us into the night

You asked me what you look like

Under the new moon

indigo night

some offshore storms tremble

in their own dark

We counted the waves

until the breath of ocean

became white noise

I unfolded the maps of your heart

and charted longitudinal lines of loss

to the edge of each constellation

I named stars

after all of your scars

and then we laughed as they twinkled

because then your pain

became the most beautiful light

we’d seen in a long time

Do you know what you look like?

Your face is poetry

your heart-shine is a meteor shower of cosmic grace

the sky blushes

at the atmospheric conspiracy of your smile

and when you’re in motion

the tide tilts toward the beauty of your being

And you are enough

you are enough

Enough, Laura Totten, 2016

up

Atmospheric physics is the study of the phenomenon of clouds. If this isn’t poetry, I don’t know what is. Clouds are created through a modest dichotomy of radiation balances and energetic transfers. They form when rising air cools to the point where some of the water molecules join together faster than they are torn apart. Some of that invisible water vapor condenses to form visible droplets. After cloud droplets form, one of two things happen: either they collide with each other and grow by joining together to such a large size that they fall to the ground as rain, or they evaporate. On average, only one-half of all cloud formations come to fruition and fall to the earth as raindrops. The other half re-evaporate back into the atmosphere.

Love is precarious in this same way. A serendipitous collision followed by a synergetic dance. Then a fifty-fifty chance of synchronization or vaporizing. Not good odds, but worth it every time.

excerpt from Creation Myth, Laura Totten, 2011