Treasure

It's not about trinkets or plunder.
No, this is simply about those things, like good coffee and vests,
that seem to define all you do
In the simple, communal ways
that sepia and antique furniture define old postcards.
We are not the sum of our pieces
But our parts tend to leave little room for excess.
Somewhere, between your love for the people
And the people you love,
I was kicked out of the in-crowd.
It never ceases to amaze me how you can care so tirelessly for the causes of others
they have dog-eared pages from your ever-present hands
And yet feel so hopelessly lost amidst the mess of yourself.

You love...baseball,
and simplicity, black tea and lemon meringue pie.
There is this bookshelf in your house,
filled with sculptures and photographs, things-learned and remembered
And the books are clever-bound, and the medicine hides on the top shelf,
And sometimes, like when the front tire is bent a little
The bike sits there too.
You stood there, gently leaning, and told me, quite calmly
how the acquisition of knowledge doesn't equate to the proliferation of joy.

You love...girls with mousy hair,
political discourse, and physical labor.
There was this time that I was looking at the counter, flour-covered,
and you kissed me, behind my ear, next to my heart,
and it was simple, it involved your arms,
On my hip, around my waist,  and somehow,
between the brush of your lips and the soft, quick speeding of my pulse,
I felt safe, and suffused
With the proliferation of joy that defies knowledge.

A complex cerebral network controls emotional regulation
It processes faces, body language, and pheromones,
It notes the kisses in the corners of people's mouths,
And the soft feeling of one hand in another.
It catches you in its meanderings,
It mesmerizes you with its promises of a short life lived sweetly.
Our ties to one another rest like ghosts there,
neural paths that maintain firing even when the stimulus is gone.
Memories echo in those small, simple spaces, one dendrite to axon, little codes,
softly sighing, across the arm of its brother.

In their flickering signals, I watch myself,
Once, and again,
As you say, "Now? Not now. Maybe later."
You shut the door,
but forget to say goodbye. 

And I've come to the conclusion,
Standing as long as I have in the shadow of your dismissal
That since your heart lies with your treasure,
Never have I been so jealous of jewels.