Heat

Their hands have become accustom to the temperate dishes of steaming poetry on porcelain

My own fingertips graze the edges of the round plate I have offered to carry and present to it’s patron. The edges tepid, coaxing itself past my fingers like breathe of a small feline, but as I slide the palm of my hand closer to the center, my hand throbs with heat as the temperature rises…the plate like our planet, the center a nebula of fire. I nearly drop the dish but bite the corner of my mouth instead through the ignited surface of my skin.

Is touching him like those plates? When knuckles graze a fervid surface and I jerk my hand away quickly, for protection…but almost want to go back and and touch it again with careful fingertips to see how long I can stand it.

*

People say I hide behind my bangs. My reflection in the mirror behind the bar only proves this point, though it’s a little cloudy, my reflection, I mean

Although my vision could be heading in that direction as well, fuzzy from the onset of Malbec that tastes of dried figs and fermented lust.

I feel as if I’m in one of those movies where the director chose to use fancy camerawork; that technique where everything in the background seems to be moving at the speed of sound and the person you are suppose to focus on is standing there in the middle of it, sharp against a stream of passing colors, caught in some bizarre rainstorm. Everything whizzes around me in an amalgamation of color and scents but time sticks together between each bite of scallop, brushed with a slash of deep rouge sauce, fireworks and flickering lights, salt, water, earth, fire.