The thing about fingerprints is not that, right now, there are seven billion different unique fingerprints on seven billion different people.
It is not that in all of human history no one finger print has been repeated, making, if my math is right, which it's not, twenty trillion individual fingerprints.
Nor is it even that none of the quadrillions of people that will come after me will have my exact finger print.
No, the thing about fingerprints is that they are utterly useless
Which is to say they serve no practical purpose in the survival of the **** Sapien.
That's a lot of effort to put into something that is pointless

2.
If we were created in God's image, then God was a man and
I imagine he took Sunday off and came back to work on Monday like the rest of us.
So maybe fingerprints haven't been forever.
Like with snowflakes maybe God's just doing some interior decorating lately.

Or maybe Saint Peter was kicking it with God in the break room at heaven and was like, "Dude...we need a new system, too many people are dying and I can't keep looking up everyone's deeds by hand; it's taking too long."
And in a moment of genius He was all, "I got this bro" and invented the fingerprint
Then went down to Best Buy and got one of those scanner things for the pearly gates and now when you die you just scan your finger and it auto-populates your deeds and if you get in it's all awmmmm and the gates open,
And if you don't get in it's all whup whum and you fall through a hole in a cloud in the sky and land in a fiery pit of hell.

(My parents stopped making me go to church in 2nd grade so my visions of heaven and hell are colored in crayon.)

3.
I wonder if the image of God sitting at a desk with a protractor, compass, drafting pencils, and tracing paper designing each individual finger print all day long comforts you?

4.
Maybe we're some Alien sociology major's thesis and our fingerprints are our unique identifiers for tracking and data collection purposes

5.
When I started this poem I thought maybe fingerprints are keys.
As in someone out there has the fingerprint that unlocks me.
But I've loved more than once
Hurt more than twice
And had a lot more *** than that
So unless this key unlocks something I've never heard of my lock's broken and I need to know who to call about that.
But I don't like to think of myself as broken anymore.

6.
Maybe when God's little helpers are making us they slice off a sheet of skin from the butcher roll, spread it out flat sticky side up on the stainless steel slab.
Grab a set of bones off the shelf lay them down and like canvas around a frame stretch the skin tight around our skeleton.
Starting from toes, to the knee, over the shoulder, around those pesky elbows
Until they tie us off at the finger tips with twine, cut the excess with sheep sheers, let it heal.
Fingerprints.
Our our little "Heche en el cielo"

7.
When I fall in love for the last time, I will dip my finger in red paint.
I will roll my finger across the bare chest of my love and she will wear it there
Like a tattoo no one else could give her.

8.
Maybe there is no point to fingerprints
Like arpeggios before a concerto
Maybe God was just warming up

9.
Maybe fingerprints are the point to everything

10.
Maybe an omnipresent God is at every birth
In every bedroom, hospital, and taxi cab
In every town, in every city, in every country in the world.

Maybe every time a baby is born
God, takes the time to name it
Then writes it down
In a language only He understands

I trace the memories kept behind like fingerprints.
The love we had is now crushed and swept away by a wave of  
our indolence and insanity.
I go back to the time of sadness,
Because it was the sadness of her eyes the made me
happy
happy
happy
and somewhat sane…

All I have left are the mental photographs of what happened
and of wanting what could have been. I leave now with all the
things that I traced—things that can never be erased
like fingerprints that never  
ever had changed.
I sit here alone in this disease-ridden couch, with my
disease-ridden hope. And I will memorize your eyes,
blinking to the rhythm of you heartbeat, dancing in a starlit daydream—as  
I am wishing of a memory where you gave me  
everything you had
and where I offered you the pieces that were left
of me.

I kept all memories of you in a heart-shaped box,
where it is slowly crumbling as time goes by.
I kept all your secrets,
your playbook,
your cards,
your broken cassettes and cigarettes
our now and always,
your sad eyes and the happiness you had
and which made me smile again.

So maybe fingerprints and memories share a common thing. They say  
that “good things happen to those who wait”, I’d say keep on waiting,
*******, I have been waiting, and still all I’ve traced is  
the measurements of my  
indolence and insanity. So yeah, keep on waiting.

WEARING EACH OTHER'S FINGERPRINTS

midnight
tips the candle
slowly slowly

until the pain is bearable
our fingers scream
wax stealing our fingerprints

we laugh in the dark
peel off each other's fingerprints
they lie there

alien animals
cooling on a saucer
sleep finds us

wearing each other's fingerprints
( you me
I you )

years later
not even Death
can steal you from me

September 30th 2015 5 am

Unwind, unwind, unwind, unwind unwind, rewind, look at your hands. Do you even recognize your own fingerprints; you never did.
But you recognize theirs, every uneven swirl and pattern.
Now burn them off.
Can you recognize their fingerprints on the body that was found dead behind a 7-Eleven dumpster?
Can you even recognize that the body is yours?
This is what you asked for. This is what you asked for. This is what you asked for.
Hands, fingers, hands, fingers, nails, knives.
You made this mistake.
They found your fingerprints on the shovel that dug the grave just for you.
Your mistake, don't give second chances.
Your mistake, no fingerprint will ever the same.

I've thought about a lot this week
I'll write it down before I sleep
The words that I'm too shy to speak
While you and I are lying face to face.
I'm too shy to unhinge my jaw
And let the syllables freely fall
I'll lie awake and write it all
So maybe you can see.
People leave fingerprints on our soul
After the curtain's closed and they've played their role
But they also leave us with a gaping hole
That fingerprints won't fill.
But you were the one to make all the difference
And understand the purple scars on my wrists
Some people wrap our souls in their fists
And refuse to ever let it go.

My fingerprints tell a story
on occasion I'll glance down at them
Careful yet unobtrusive rings of life
Much like the tree that grew in the yard
of my childhood home.

Tonight these circles within circles
trace the outline of your body.
Your spine.
Your hip bones.
Your ribs.
Every muscle tense and then relaxes
under the strength of my extremities

I'm horrible at saying goodbye
I'd much rather lie here and
outline your body for you.
My fingers the chalk outline at a crime scene

Fugitives are always careful about fingerprints.
They're easily picked up by white dust
and foreign gloved hands

But this time, I'll leave my ringed prints behind
I want them to know I knew you.

My eyelids seem
to be the strongest part of me.
When the rest of my body
falls
into the ocean
of blankets they
float open upon the white water
atop
the waves of sleep.
This is when you come back.
In this mattress I am a piece
of clay and I can still feel the deep indentations of where your fingers
wrapped themselves like Ivy around my hips.
Hips, that stuck out like white flags of surrender and
fell to the ground in a straight line.
I can still hear
you.
I am a broken record,
and your whispers are the only track that plays at this hour.
“You are fat”
“Look at how flat you are Emma, no boy will ever look at you.”
“You are ugly.”
These are the nights when I can
feel the spiderwebs your words wrapped around my ribs and
listen to the way my heart beats constricted
in its cage, your hand still clenched around it.
Can’t you see me bleeding?
Safety lies
beneath my eyelids but you pull them open
I can feel
your icy touch behind my eyes as I stare
coldly at the ceiling.
you demand to be heard.
Did you mean to put your words
in my pocket when you reached in to steal the sleep that was nestled there like crumpled dollar bills?
Do you realize that you stayed with me?
Can you take your stolen midnight hours back and place them on your pillowcase?
Will your eyelids close?
Or can you still hear my cries of protest as your soundtrack plays into the night?
I don't understand?
Did you think it wouldn't hurt me?
Or did you want to live forever,so you put your
fingerprints where you knew they wouldn't fade.

It is said that those
who have emotionally touched you
leave an everlasting imprint
on your beating heart
and shining soul
An impression of sorts
like one of a fingerprint,
the swirling patterns of their delicate fingertips
pressed against our skin
leaving a permanent mark
for everyone to see
a tattoo of beauty
or sometimes,
a scar of spiteful hatred
and sham
The imprints left on our skin
eventually travel to our hearts
recreating our character
and traveling to our souls,
shaping us anew
taking and reshaping our very beings
to become a kind angel
or a vengeful demon
refining our once innocent minds
to become something else
Fingerprints pressed to our eyes,
lips,
hands
and feet
either leaving us with good impressions
or wicked intentions
It is not for us to decide
whether those who touch us
leave fingerprints of swirling beauties
or a labyrinth of anguish
but we can decide
what we do with these unique tattoos
and what we create using
their magnificent power.

your fingerprints are on my heart and i haven't quite been able to get rid of them at all
it's been six months and i owe my current boyfriend an apology because ****, i don't love him
i never asked for these lingering prints and i've tried so hard to get rid of them but tears did not wash them away, and loneliness did not erase them. now im learning that a heart in new hands will not cover your marks either and to my boyfriend, i'm so incredibly sorry, but you're not him

look at your fingers.
extend & wiggle them.
look closer.
fingerprints.
not another person on earth
has the same ones as you.
you are alive.

m.f.

Fingerprints are like relationships
they leave a trace.
Your fingerprints are all over me
The whorls of your prints are seared into my skin
Into my soul.
I submit each time you touch me
set aflame by your caress.
Spiral patterns of you criss cross my body,
Your body.
Sparks of need jump from your fingertips
arcing into me, possessing, caressing,
they leave me breathless and defenceless
to the onslaught that will leave me inevitably,
wrecked upon our bed, like a trapped ship on the shore.