Your lips were like a red and ruby chalice,
Warmer than a summer night.
The clouds were like an alabaster palace,
Rising to a snowy height.
Each star its own aurora borealis,
Suddenly you held me tight.
I could see the midnight sun.

The lines luxuriate in hyperbolic, jewel-toned imagery to convey the sensory overwhelm of sudden intimacy. Mercer stacks similes—ruby chalice, alabaster palace, aurora-lit stars—to elevate a private moment into something mythic and cosmically illuminated. The culminating paradox, “I could see the midnight sun,” suggests love’s power to invert ordinary perception: darkness becomes radiant, the impossible becomes briefly believable. The diction (“chalice,” “alabaster,” “aurora borealis”) borrows from sacred and polar imagery, implying both reverence and wonder, as if the beloved’s embrace grants a vision ordinarily reserved for rare natural phenomena.