To be in a body is rapture —Rumi
One breath –
my hand, my face
on your chest,
and we have one
breath.
To be in this body
brings pain.
To be in this world
where heartbreak
makes us feel
this is too much –
soul torn from mind
and yet –
your skin pressed to mine,
and roses sing,
rain sparking sunlight.
This rapture –
one breath –
believes.

KB BALLENTINE’s eighth collection, Spirit of Wild, launched in March with Blue Light Press. Her earlier books can be found with Iris Press, Blue Light Press, Middle Creek Publishing, and Celtic Cat Publishing. Published in North Dakota Quarterly, Atlanta Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, and others, her work also appears in anthologies including I Heard a Cardinal Sing (2022), The Strategic Poet (2021), Pandemic Evolution (2021), and Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace (2017).