I’m smiling, slightly out of focus,
the lens seemingly as intoxicated as the woman looking through it.
My face is lit by the sun beginning to show itself
beyond the highway
and a few dimly glowing streetlights.
Yellow flowers picked from the side of the road
rest over my left ear.
My eyelids are heavy from lack of sleep
and too much drink.

A little after 5 am,
we stumble from apartment steps
to abandoned baseball field,
speak every thought that comes to mind-
of politics, religion,
the dread of an impending Monday,
how much I need to quit smoking,
how she won’t judge me if I never do.

Both of us are too afraid to expose
the feelings swelling within,
the developing desire to pull the other close.
The first time we’ve been together
without a circle of friends surrounding us.

A little before 7 am,
we leave the field and spend our entire walk back
trying to find some semblance of balance.
I pause halfway to light my last American Spirit,
she leans down and picks a bunch of tiny yellow flowers from a bush.
I tell her I can’t believe a new day has broken
as she laughs and places her small bouquet in my hair.

I’m looking at this woman behind a camera lens,
grinning like a child as she tells me to
“rock that hippie look.”
She snaps the picture.
We return to the apartment,
wasting words, dancing
around what we both want most.

A little past 10 am, we kiss,
our lips no longer able to resist
the building magnetism.

At midday,
we fall asleep, her head
resting softly on my chest.