Hearts race as skin melts with skin.
Fingers slow dance
across heaving backs and chests,
drawing pictures on hips and necks.
I feel your fingertips and breath,
all over me,
tight against.

I can write these lines without
ever righting wrongs the same way
I write notes without writing songs.
I colored pictures, but I only used black and white without
seeing the beauty of the gray
between the lines.
And there's a certain majesty that is only caught
under moonlight, but that is nothing compared to the
photograph in your eyes.
It's the way my heart races without having a beat,
or the way I never seem to dream when I sleep.
Your name catches on every inhale I breathe,
your essence a place I never want to leave.
It's writing a love poem without
feeling that rhyme,
it's knowing you don't burn the same color
every time.
Bathe in the ashes from past poems,
believe that every word is your own.

My words are butterflies in a meadow.
You walk through them and they scatter and float around you,
twisting and dancing in your footsteps,
riding on your breath,
and I am left chasing them.
Wordless.
But not empty handed.

My hands full of rhythm.
Like the fall and rise of your chest.
The steady inhale, exhale I listen to.
My hands dancing in the shine of your eyes.

These lines like those elusive butteflies
reflected in that shine.
So I wait for them to glide near.
Patient.
And when they alight upon my hands,
I let my fingertips breathe them in,
and soak who I am.

And it is then that I feel their raw emotion.
Burning without a sting.
Instead, calm and reassuring.

In an instant they're gone
in a quiet breath of wind.
But their essence lingers
in the life of this poem.