A finger can be something beautiful, something that strokes

piano keys and bandages children’s wounds,

something that contains the entire emotion of a single human being

in its joints. Or it can be a device for turning the body

inside out, like a rag doll that is split open with a seam ripper

to remove the surplus stuffing.

If math has anything to do with this, I could multiply

23 by 7 five times and still not get any close

to the number of times I have ripped ripped myself apart,

like Moses parting the Red Sea.

Physicists believe this dimension
may be nothing more than a hologram

But they have not run their fingertips
down the curve of your back

When we're naked, lying in bed
with our bodies pressed together
When we are how I imagined,
pretended with my pillow,
when we were apart
When I keep squirming closer and
we keep giggling
it still isn't enough

Now that we're enacting all I imagined
it still isn't enough
we're restrained
separated
I just want to be as close to you as possible and I'm trying and we're
close,
so maddeningly close but
it still isn't enough

Because we can't escape from this cage,
this cage of our bodies.

Remember when on that wet day
when I left and you stayed
under the umbrella with pokes and tears
and I asked 'Why? Why do I like you so much?'
and you just laughed at my
eloquence
but now I know it's really since
we feel the rain while
others just get wet

It is unseasonably warm
                    and no, dear, I am not just talking about the weather

This is not a criticism I swear. You're absolutely brilliant but I remember you telling me to tell you if we saw typos. In "incapable" at the end of the first verse you wrote too instead of to.

Yesterday I felt desperate to hold you.

Two, three, and four yesterdays ago I felt afraid to tell you that I miss you. Tomorrow and the next four, five, six, seven, eight tomorrows are going to be away from you and I am going to try to not wait to hear from you because you are so far away.

Today I will sit in the good lighting by the window and pretend to be a leaf while I drink two cups of black-mango tea.