you know how the sun rays pour through plastic-sheeted greenhouse walls
and the waves hit something inside and change their lengths
and get trapped and keep heating and heating those plants, lapping back and forth,
steaming up the whole great arched building?

in my car that night my back arched back like the roof of the greenhouse we parked by,
and i’ll bet we could’ve kept those fragile buds and stalks warm in the winter night
better than any plastic sheets.
our still half-clothed bodies held the heat we generated
hotter than the sun who loves the earth long-distance.

you told me the scent i leave on your sheets arouses you,
and i wondered if it doesn’t get lost among the smells of
frankincense, whiskey, old beer and spicy tobacco.
but through my own odors – soap and lotion
and the thicker smell of my scalp that i didn’t wash today,
i found you in a triangle on the shoulder of your shirt.
is it your fabric softener or your shampoo? mixed with your skin, yea.
it turns me on in my room next to the window with the wet, cold, icy night on the other side of the glass.

an image of your face as you hugged my white leg straight against your darker shoulder
flashes inside my eyelids like an old school subliminal message
suggesting buttery popcorn to satisfy hunger, with an ice cold Coca~Cola to wash it down,
but i’d rather have you.

your eyebrows creased then like a frown
and you looked at me with a beautiful question in your eyes.
did you know your lids are darkened?
smoky brown colored, exotic, or tired?

i trusted you for that look as
we gasped together like thirsty fish thrashing
until we collapsed together in my greenhouse backseat to breathe.