I will yearn for you in secret
Even though your hands were a bit too rough
Even though you hide the soft flesh underneath the stone of your outer skin
I will yearn for you
While waiting on the other side of those barricades
I will stay quiet
And still
Until you feel it is safe enough to peer outside
And to see that I am there
And it is spring
I will yearn for you in secret and in darkness
Until you are rough enough to step out into daylight
And to let your eyes adjust to see your own softness

In spite of everything,
I arranged flowers over my skin in a great effort to be worshiped
made myself into a garden for your plucking

I didn’t know how much of me was woman
and how much was girl

But you knew what I was
and what I would become under your caress
In spite of everything,
I offered up the entirety of my being to you
gave your selfish hands each blooming flower that you desired
For I was half asleep with longing for you
A cooing dove to your touch
and only yours

I did not have a heart to love you
until you sculpted it out of stone
and somehow you still could not understand
that it was made for you alone

I had only hoped to love you
to get lost in the center of the storm of you
to live on as an atom of your heart

I cannot go on hanging in the suspension between Earth and sky -
caught in the perpetual pull of dark stars
and drawn back down again into the twisting roots of the Earth
I'm laid out, **** between them
soaking with rainwater and scorched by the swelling moon
The wind shivers and daydreams tremble to white
craving some fleeting outline or living complexities
I would like to be carved as stone to put an end to this floating
but I'll wait here until you let me live as human

Don't cry, strange beauty -
The river and the wind listens
And cries gently with you

until then, we shared a shy love
the kind of love that did not yet have a voice to speak
we lingered in those silent gardens
dandelions, snow drops and jasmine
we lingered longer in those gentle traces of fingertips over soft skin
those quiet, dimpled glances in the stairway
and i wish we lingered longer still

until we spoke, our love was shy
and then we were frightened of the voice
i had only hoped to love you
unabashedly & gently love you
but the sound rang and rang in our ears
and now our love is a different animal entirely -
it gnaws away at the soft flesh that it used to trace

until then, we shared a shy love
but now, we don't love for the quiet
we love for the hunger that must be fed