excerpts from Paradise
You turn around to look at me.
Fire and the desperate subtlety
of chase and capture
tease and rapture
until we burst
from need and joy.
Our ritual is expected
yet you pretend at guessing
so I can spell it slowly,
when at last
the dance unwinds
from chasing to
the catching.
A trail of clothes
front door to bedroom,
scattered and torn
in a children’s frenzy
of opening their presents.
Leaving evidence of impatience
the tell tale buttons and the belts. - Steven A. Jones