These Winds

These Winds

Our windows are open. She tells me they sleep on raised beds
in the Caribbean to feel scented breezes grazing bodies and faces.
The day is hot. My skin is burnt. I ask her to move
there with me: she smiles, kisses my forehead, reflects
on the job opportunities in such a place. Cold air on my burns

raises goose bumps . “This air sweeps in from over the city,”
I answer when she asks me the winds origins. It knocks
the calendar from our wall. Her hand rests on my thigh, thumb
fanning out, back and forth. She asks where it came from

before that. “From the west,” I answer. “From Indiana, Minnesota
Colorado.” Before that? (pages of my journal flap and turn.) “California,
the ocean.” She smiles. “Here, we have pacific breezes.” Her hand is moving
now, my body is warming. I hear the blinds buzzing as this much-traveled
breeze plays them, we hear it pushing the screen in, street voices
are muted by the its chorus. “This air will sustain you. On it, we will grow
strong. Let its motion on your skin be a reminder of how I move there.”