Passion
You may feel it in obvious ways
How he leans in with his enveloping strength
Or, in the thunder of your chest, riding imaginary horses with your best friend
Forgetful of arithmetic and teachers who felt you’d end your days in borstel, because you did like running rings around them didn’t you?
Regretting those petty rebellions later
Then in the crisp light and imagined stampede
You thrashed to the furthest point in your mind, bathed in fantasy
A place hard to reach, even splayed on cold Mexican tile, pretending your hand was his
Even, swimming underwater, until your lungs burned to surface
It was as if, once you grow up, the way back becomes harder
Like a secret language, only known to children, daunting you with tattered reminder
The tree house of your neighbor, as you take the prescribed walk, your cardiologist insisted upon
The first rain lillies urging through Texan soil against all odds, their impossible fragility, an exquisite reprieve from cracked earth
Have you gone so far child? As to forget the combination? Here where verbena and lemon grass pummel air with magic, here where you didn’t need anything 
But the cupping of your hands with wonderment, running through water like you were born again and again, emptied of harm, full of the vigor of not knowing, the beaten path to adulthood