Love in Passing

I top off my perfume bottles with

nice, Irish whisky.

Sometimes,

with the smoke of libraries on fire.

Because I think,

maybe,

if I can flood your lungs

with a loose buzz, the kind that creeps up

through sweetened veins to excite slender cheek-bones

with rose water and vigor

then,

well,

respectively, you’ll come to crave that warmth I incite.

Or,

I suppose,

If I’m able to

envelop your airways

and eye-ways

and ear-ways with the effervescence of

burning histories and smoldering fantasies and flickering ideas

then of course,

You’d have no choice but to sit underneath the ashen hail

and allow your back-breaking breaths

to kindle that new fervor

for all the words and stories and authorities

I would profess to you

that carry across,

modestly,

the gentle breeze

from me

to you.