happiness and whole milk

It’s the little things that make me happy.
Like when my brother and I make bets—the way
we did when he was a pro ball player and I was an ice skater,
writer, and Broadway star—still. I’ve won
Blizzards and bought lagers for babies and basketball,
respectively. When I talk theology with my sister,
which isn’t as profound as it sounds
when we’re in sweatpants on the couch,
palming gigantic mugs of tea, garbed in store-bought blankets.
But it is more spiritual than it sounds,
because I like when she says
redemption, takes a sip and blankets her
pregnant belly with a happy hand.
And all the while the highways are going to bed,
and all the while the rain is making love to the roof.
These things make me happy
like the serendipitous way that some days
my underwear matches perfectly my shirt,
and no one but my backside and me knows
the extent of my sex appeal.
Or the way ice-cubed coffee tastes when I’m tired in May—
like Italian boys sweating and thrusting
hands into tomato patches and grape buckets,
or like shadows must taste to trees—like midnight but awake.
I like the way fruit gets drunk on its own joy juices,
fattens and falls because it’s so drowsy from the weight of
its own fat happiness. And the Bolivian farmer
who is missing teeth but smiles more than Miss Roberts
because what does he care about incisors
when the papayas are swollen as ripe shiners
and the wife is full? She always chuckles when she spits
the pips and later under the whole milk moon, she’ll kiss
his mouth with the missing teeth and believe that his
lips and his bronzed bare feet belong
to a prince. Because that makes her happy, but also
a princess. What makes me happy is paper right before
its first kiss of pen, like you before your first kiss—
smooth-faced, expectant and boundless—and then after,
more lovely than before it all, before
your lips were marked up with the language.
Think of the black-haired Egyptian woman who speaks
in silk scarves that harmonize with her hair. She says her name
is Elham and when the teacher asks
how to pronounce it the Latino man cries
out Iowa! The silk-mouthed woman speaks the language
of God, but this man speaks the language of distance and borders,
of backroad maps, of running. He likes the rhythm
of adventure, and I like the way he thinks.
When I am driving home the same way I drove home
after someone died or after a volleyball game,
a DJ lady comes on the radio and tells me a story
about her friend who, all her life dreamed of making goat cheese,
dreamed of the churning and the curd.
One glad day, she saved enough dinero to
buy a goat that grows cheese like you wouldn’t believe,
cheese that makes the cows come home or at least
gives them a chance to catch a matinee. The DJ lady
tells me to carry hope in the bottom of my shoe so I won't
ever give up on my own sweet cheese dream,
but I'll probably tuck it into a bra strap instead.
I want you to be happy.