Heart Murmur

Photo by Leah Kelley from Pexels

I believed in the urgency with which your hands
jumped to mine and held tight, like a robin’s feet to the branch.

Sometimes your arms ache with the power you’ve stored inside them,
and sometimes they appear to be as small as mine, hunched and folded.

That day when we laid down in the grass, our knees as pyramids,
our eyes battling the sunlight — I think I knew it then.

Yes, it was there, away from the steamy avenue, sneakers scuffed with tar,
that I knew you loved me, and there too I felt the jump, the snag, the catch,

inside your love, the ripple beneath your hushed surface. It was a small thing,
a heartbeat inside a heartbeat, tender, faint. A stutter or a murmur.

We can be quiet together, we decided then, still, and still contented,
but this small hiccup (what was it? fear? grief? hunger?),

you showed me with your fingertips, will always be.