I want you to hold my hand.
Hold my hand so tight that my bones break and every crack whispers how much you really need me. The space between my fingers should forget what it's like to be empty because you'll fix each and every crease. Light a fire in my palms and melt away any other touch other than your own.
I desire you.
I am something worth destroying. Can't you see that I would rather be a pile of broken floorboards and shattered glass than an abandoned house, having never been touched by you? Burn your name across my body and tattoo it onto my heart so I understand what it means to love with a passion.
I want to thank you.
You've made minutes feel like decades by holding me until my internal clock shattered and the only perception I had of time was the beating of your heart. You turned words I was too afraid to speak into currency and now I am a millionaire with nothing to show for it except your smile. You filled my eyes with stars and heart with assurance so when pieces of me died I still had something left to believe in. You never gave up on me when everyone else did.

When she was born
Her relatives spat on the ground,
Called her mother a witch
And said "The only thing she's good for is dowry".

By 6 years old
She understood what being a girl meant;
Be still and quiet
Your opinion is irrelevant .

At 11 she watched her brothers go to school
As she sat in the kitchen,
Doing 'the work of a woman',
With tears of longing streaming down her face.

At 17, she slept with a man who was 67
Living with the cruel hand she'd been dealt;
How did she raise 2 children
When she was still a child herself?

At 35, no longer a child bride
She was replaced,
With a girl that had not
Even come of age.

She held the young woman
And dried her tears.
She understood her sorrow
She had felt it for years.

But this was her destiny,
Her role from birth.
To be the silent weeper,
The cleaner, the mother,
The lover; who would never know Love.

At 65 she's died,
Buried next to a man she never even knew.
Not a single male cries,
Her funeral attended by few.

So why the abuse?
Why so much pain?
Why raise such a brave soul in vain?

One rebellious voice cries,
With tears streaming down her face
"If only she were male!"
She looks to me and says

"You wish to know,
why she could have had no joy?
The answer is simple
They wanted a boy"

I'm sorry
Sorry sorry,
So deeply sorry.
I want to be forgiven
So as soon as we figure out
All the ways I've wronged you,
Please be angry at me
So I can apologise.
Sorry
God, I'm so sorry.

I keep collecting books I know
I'll never, never read;
My wife and daughter tell me so,
And yet I never head.
"Please make me," says some wistful tome,
"A wee bit of yourself."
And so I take my treasure home,
And tuck it in a shelf.

And now my very shelves complain;
They jam and over-spill.
They say: "Why don't you ease our strain?"
"some day," I say, "I will."
So book by book they plead and sigh;
I pick and dip and scan;
Then put them back, distrest that I
Am such a busy man.

Now, there's my Boswell and my Sterne,
my Gibbon and Defoe;
To savour Swift I'll never learn,
Montaigne I may not know.
On Bacon I will never sup,
For Shakespeare I've no time;
Because I'm busy making up
These jingly bits of rhyme.

Chekov is caviare to me,
While Stendhal makes me snore;
Poor Proust is not my cup of tea,
And Balzac is a bore.
I have their books, I love their names,
And yet alas! they head,
With Lawrence, Joyce and Henry James,
My Roster of Unread.

I think it would be very well
If I commit a crime,
And get put in a prison cell
And not allowed to rhyme;
Yet given all these worthy books
According to my need,
I now caress with loving looks,
But never, never read.