On the perfect day 10 years from now
we will drive the fifteen hours to New Orleans,
chaotic wind tangling the dark blonde of our heads.

my eyes will trace the backs of your hands,
the creases in your knuckles,
the delicacy in the bend of your wrist
as we pass through Huntsville streets.

(Tennessee and you I've seen before
but Tennessee scenery doesn't fill me quite so full
as the sight of your body pressed against a ginger sunset.)

October's leaves will twinkle a little added gold
as we piddle through the back roads of crumbling towns,
lost in the curves of one lane streets  with no lines.

Melting like honey in an air on a road built for us,
we will breathe fuller,deeper in those moments
when my leg draped along yours
is the only   r e a l   conversation
of the day.

My belly full of baby,
we will pull off the blacktop somewhere in Birmingham
and paint my toes, your cheeks, strands of our messy hair
in the clay of Alabama
and I will pretend to be
the last surviving red dirt girl,
loving her blue wind boy
on the orange of Alabama skies.

For the next 10 years, 15 hours and every minute after that
I will be your Southern Queen...

(my down-home skin will breathe
entirely for the delicacy of your touch.)

and finally, as we stroll  the streets of Louisiana,
our shoes skipping cracks in the pavement,
New Orleans will sigh and momentarily turn her head
marveling at the sight of my pink cheeks
swollen belly, a smile that spreads from lobe to lobe
and the way my eyes, bathed in absolute intrigue
look openly into you.

Yes,

New Orleans will absorb the sound
of our content laughter
as it echoes through her streets.

Yes,
she will turn her head and gawk
at the hope embedded in our tangled hands
the quiet tenderness that drips from our sleeves

and the complete vulnerability that is

Love.

I swear to you, New Orleans will remember our touch.