To be kissed in the living room

by a jalapeño’s capsaicin, kitchen simmering—

a tickle in the throat, the seed of a laugh, stuck.

 

The Tiki Masala bubbles and the sliced peppers

are green coins, swimming, something inside me soars

like a silver quarter being flipped to call heads or tails.

 

When I devour the discs whole, the shiver-shot

is green too, and mercurially prismed,

hot pepper high; heat sweet.

 

They begin as blossoms, flowers that

make me feel child dreamy, calling up the moon,

if it were a dress to dance in, skirt spinning, catching air.

 

Nightshade fruit, handle its adult contours

with care, watchful touch. All those seeds,

spilling and sometimes tears too.

 

The scarred lines on mature peppers

are called corking, striations marking

sudden growth, and aficionados desire them,

 

don’t see them as imperfections. The crescent curves

call up the pleasure of hands under my dress in the kitchen

and how wanting blossoms, burns, and comes to a harvest

 

I pick and pick, greedy and grateful, but I slowly

savor too, I do. I try to be an open palm, gentle, not grasping

and pleasure comes too in cool, quiet rest, or just sitting beside him,

 

the fine press of his shoulder, the landscape of his face, rise

and fall of his voice, as well as the heated anticipation of arrival in the before.

I try to reframe departing as seasoning, my sadness in leaving as the glorious price

 

of admission. Patience is a green plant I try to water daily,

think of his elegant thumb and forefinger rubbing the wide, verdant leaf

and below, the first pepper, still skirted in blossom.