"His Eye is on the Sparrow"

We intersect at Bloor and Yonge: an accident on the corner. We watch medics pull bodies from broken glass. I try not to stare.

Fingers light on my wrist, you guide me down a quiet street. The barista greets you by name; you carry our lattes out the back, smiling over your shoulder from the fire escape.

I lean against the café wall beside the vent from the roaster (gentle smoke, deeply aromatic, arousing as any scent) and watch you pull a moleskin journal from your bag.

I am squinting in the sun as you recite Catullus – a translation you wrote this morning. Two millennia incarnate in your voice: gentle as the sparrow you tease from my breast, pecking wistful hands…

In your measured cadence, your sonorous voice, I hear us make love: rhythm of tides… ductility of gold… spinning of stars over hemispheres...

(I hear you moan, one octave below: content in my taste and your sweat.)

You’re closing the notebook, your hand touches mine, and we fly.