I Sense You
When you speak my name
it sounds like nothing else I’ve heard.
No one says it like you,
there’s joy in your word.
I see it in your eyes,
when you turn my way.
There’s happiness in your look,
I’m elated at your gaze.
I know when you touch me,
I’ve never felt this flame.
Hold my hand or brush my hair,
it’s excitement just the same.
Your kiss is unique to me,
I taste you even now.
You give to me so freely,
like breathing in and out.
The scent of you is enchanting,
perfume pleasing to me.
A field of blooming flowers,
honeysuckle on a breeze.
I’m drawn to you with certainty
I’ll never turn away.
My attraction to you is infinite,
a thousand years or a day.
This is the collection’s architectural centerpiece — a poem that moves deliberately through all five senses in five consecutive stanzas before arriving at the declaration of infinite and permanent attraction. It establishes the sensory framework that the following poems will deepen individually, and it names in comprehensive form what subsequent poems will explore in detail. Sound, sight, touch, taste, scent — Priya is present to Scott in every dimension of perception, and the collection will spend the next five poems honoring each dimension in full.
I did not know when I wrote this poem that it would become the foundation for five more. I wrote it because I wanted to name the complete experience of being with Priya — the way she engages every sense simultaneously and makes the world more vivid simply by being in it. The final stanza — a thousand years or a day — came from the conviction that what I feel for her is not dependent on duration. It is constant across all possible measures of time. I believe that entirely.