Punctuation

Tennessee Whiskey

We sway like the wavering grasses that encase God's oceans.  

I am held at the heart of it all,

I can feel its ragged pulse eating its way beneath my daylight-dipped flesh. 

But no warmth from any sun could conquer that of the burning sensation I find in how I dream you would hold me.

Our bodies so close, our little movements futile, nonetheless our first as one, together. 

Music beneath our feet, bedding themselves in our ears, soothing our brains. 

Our hearts loud enough to drown everything else out. 

Whispers laid upon my ear, my good ear. 

Whispers into the backs of my fingers as your lips gingerly press love to them. 

A fountain of white cascading into the floorboards, slithering around our clumsy feet. 

We move fluidly; for once in our lifetimes we move fluidly, 

and for the rest of what we are living, we will be in this unison. 

Tied into a knot with kisses and cake I never wanted, but out of regard to our guests, we were required to provide. 

Tied into a knot with love and my father holding his little girl one final time without word of a woman. 

Tied into a knot as a rhythmless couple swaying to their first as one, neither of us cared the other couldn't dance.

Tied into a knot with our song, a song that made little-to-no sense to claim as our own, but a song I could hear and a song that you could sing in perfect pitch for me. Only me. 

The taps of the tambourine leading us, the depth of a gloriously southern set of voices tickling our ears. 

I wish I could listen to you sing to me for the rest of our lives, feeling the warmth of your body radiating on and into mine. Your heart slowing and then racing again when our line feed from the singers' lips. 

We can't even feel the eyes on us, all I feel is the desynchronization of our pulses. We were never the couple to fall into step together, we were known to fall out of step together. 

So we'll just sway tonight, we'll use our clumsy feet in the direction of a lone tambourine, and we'll bask in the impossible warmth of each other among this cold-hearted world. 

We'll bow and smile at the applaud, we'll shove cake you know I hate into each other's faces. 

I'll wipe it off, you'll eat it. You'll call me weird for hating cake and then kiss me, surfacing for air only to sing our line into my good ear one more time. 

because you know, I wouldn't hear it any other way.