What is between fingertips when they refuse to touch?
air? Electricity? Unspoken words and promises? Feelings better left denied or not felt at all?
All the things I want from you but that I will never get? And the reasons I wont ever have them?

I watch your fingers play with a ball of paper, kneading it between your digits like fresh baked bread.
Mine do the same with my key. I pretend not to notice your hands, you most likely really don't see mine.
I wonder if you imagine my skin, instead. I know I imagine yours.

This simultaneous obliviousness this awkward use of fingers meant to caress and touch and interact.
This silent agreement to ignore our desires. This goes against every instinct I've ever felt.

I want to reach out for your nimble fingertips, to feel the roughness of them. I don't. I look down at my lonely hands.
They will never be strong enough to break the unbreakable.

I have been knocking for a while
my knuckles are bleeding ,I broke a nail
and the neighbors are staring

i am confused

once you held me close to your chest and we smiled into each other
once you touched my hand and let my fingertips rub your arm
once i knew your scars and they did not matter

but today,
today i am standing outside in the rain and it is cold
today you pretend you are not home

If only it was just
one staircase
two hallways and
five doors
keeping us from each other...

The waitress says I cannot sit here anymore
I reply that I can not, will not move
I am waiting on a friend

The ice has melted in my whiskey
The whiskey has evaporated from my whiskey
My eyelids are stuck to my forehead
I can see my face in the shiny countertop
It looks like half a rotten lemon and a pillar of salt

“Give it to me straight miss, Is he coming back?”
I ask to no one in particular , the waitress is scowling and crawling away
While she is on all fours I ask aloud, again with bitterness
“You can be the other woman without trying, I only take what is left of him after he has given his all to her. Have you ever seen eyes that can no longer see you?”
She stops and nods :I pick up leftovers for a living miss”

I fall back into bed sheets too soft for my skin and blankets that are too thick
i sweat and they stick to my fingertips
weigh me pin me down
He is beside me and his waist is mine to claim
Trepidatiously , I snake my arm around him he does not move into me but neither does he move away

“Too polite” The waitress has refilled my glass and is ******* on a lemon on the stool next to me
“Men should say good bye when they want you to leave”
I take a drink “He all but slammed the door in my face. There is nothing worse than a dog that won’t leave even after it has been shot.”

Once he held onto my wrist and buried his face into my neck , unfortunately he carved a spot in it that only he can fill
Now he calls out for her when he lies in my bed and I smile awkwardly
Now he leaves me in diners so long i become a part of the decoration

The waitress is spraying me with citrus cleaner and wiping me with a rag
“to get the black off” she claims

I make him food and he moans that it tastes like her
He touches places not meant for him but i dare not do the same
he says be careful  and I run into streets blindfolded

my feet trip over themselves to get to where he is
the waitress says “he ain't playing chase with you, he is running to someone”

I hug the bits of flesh he let fall in his haste to get to her
and sip my whiskey till it spills back out my mouth.

The waitress refuses to clean it up.

That our two girls have
my eyes (my mother's eyes)
heavens skin
A laugh like bubbling brooks and butter
flies for smiles
Hands small enough to hold
Tears of bluebirds but
big enough to hold our dreams

The boy, however
Always has your eyes
Gold and Wide, like fields of wheat blowing
and your hair, like a thunderstorm
and your laugh ,that catches raindrops
and your smile
that one day will capture a half
beating  heart like
his mother's

I am just an invisible fool. Falling, alone, Through a hole I dug. Deep, deep, deeper. With bare ****** broken hands that cant hold you or hurt you or make you feel or see. They are clasped underneath this table, as your eyes say love but your mouth says friend. Shaking wildly they ache to touch to caress to cup your face and...

What are hands made for? You ask
me, like I can answer
I can't. Not with
Out revealing my
skin, my cracked skin
I broke when I
upturned the earth beneath
my feet

like to lay
on chests
You say that yours is not
wide like seas or tall like mountains.
But, my head, fits right above your
heart. and my arms can reach
across to the other side.

All that matters is that I can check that you are breathing.