Keep your hands to yourself!
     If I have to tell you one more time to stop touching her
     I will duct tape those fingers to your knees so help me God.

Fresh from the womb I felt her.
My hands clawed the air and found her smile,
Before my eyes opened, before my ears could discern,
I felt her love, palpable and near.
After the synesthesia, when her finger no longer sang,
I felt the warmth of her neck as she swayed,
Dancing to the honey her lips spilled in the cool night air,
Her touch was more music to me than rhythm,
More primal an instinct than survival,
I would die holding my mother’s hand.

Bubbles were so much more fun before they became personal.
I spent hours chasing invisible globes
My father created from a mixture of heat and lawn chairs.
I have spent years chasing invisible globes
My peers have created from a mixture of insecurities and histories of cold.

When I am gone my heart misses you.
When I return and you extend your hand
I begin the conversation I have had with myself too many times to remember.
     They don’t mean that they don’t love you.
     But doesn’t their heart feel it too?
This magnetic pull of our celestial bodies
Gravity drawing them together until they would join in the enigma of unity
Nebulous at best I would call your reaction
It seems you would rather keep me in orbit,
Just close enough to peek at on cloudless nights,
Just far enough to let me take the asteroids on my own.

I want your hands all over me.
Since birth the world has removed itself from me,
Carving borders and barriers, walls and fences,
And the immutable space that is between you and me.
Deep in my heart waves the flag of rebellion
Held in the hand a young boy thrusts high in the air
Forever kept in the age of innocence,
The age without fences,
When it still seemed right to embrace the ones you love.
He is wearing a baseball cap and cowboy boots
And wants to know why you feel so cold.

So here we are, floating.
And I’m asking you to fall.
I am asking you split your bubble at the seems
And leap into my arms full of fear and free of expectations.
I will catch you and press you close to my heart
Where the children of the rebellion meet.
We are not falling, we are jumping.
And the heart of the earth has missed us so.