I place my hand on your shoulders.
They snap together
like an old-fashioned clothespin
on my grandmother’s clothesline.

I intruded upon your space.  
I arrived at a place
that enveloped you
in personal cellophane.

You don't touch.
You won't be touched.  
What pleasures you miss, such as,
feeling the roughness of a wrinkled ear.

You fail to feel a touch
as a finger glides along your cheek,
moving with a tenderness
that surpasses any kiss.

Frigid fear confines you,
isolating you from the human touch
that caresses and warms the soul.

You navigate life
like an unrefined stone
resting among precious gems,
made luminous by countless rubs.

I can sense your hush,
Walking beside me,
What if our hands brush?
Why step away,
What's with the rush?

Sleepless nights,I wear them out.
But if i ran up to you,
Just wait and you'll see
How much i can show off.
Like the way moon charms the stars
I shine, flushed
Beneath your Light.
My tears floating as i become
Captive to your touch.

Late were the nights when you touched my soul,
Gentle,yet so cruel.
The world lay lost in restless phantoms,
Just us awake,lost in allure.

Our hands intertwined,fierce and fevered,
Even awake from  dreams,desire pulled us near.
The heat of your kiss lingered got me acting like a fool,
As my heart bloomed under your rule.

The novelty of this is
exquisite.
In my adult life, I've never gone this long without allowing another human to touch me.
A new concept
the next time it happens, it will mean something.

Did you moan my name by mistake?
Did it catch in your throat,
get tangled up in the lie,
stick to the roof of your mouth like something foul?

Or did you forget me completely,
just for a moment,
just long enough to let her pull you under?

I bet you touched her the way you used to touch me.
Slow, deliberate,
like you wanted to make it mean something.
Like you wanted to convince yourself
this wasn’t betrayal,
just… something that happened.

You’re a ******* joke.

Did you kiss her after?
Did you pull her close like she was yours?
Did she believe you
when you whispered the same empty promises
you spoon-fed me?

I wonder if she smelled me on your skin.
If she felt my ghost in your hands.
If she knew she was just a grave
you were burying me in.

And then you came home.
Sat in our bed like nothing was different,
like the sheets weren’t stained with your filth,
like you weren’t rotting from the inside out.

Did you think I wouldn’t notice?
That I wouldn’t taste the decay
in the air between us?
That I wouldn’t feel the way your love
curdled into something sour?

You want to lie?
Fine.
Choke on it.
Rot in it.
Drown in it.

But don’t you dare touch me with those hands.
Not now.
Not ever again.

Skin


I felt the skin of my father—
his thumb a soft shawl
that enveloped our
intertwined hands.

And when the embrace broke—
how my tiny fingers traced
the moss line of his skull
until it became a familiar garden.

How he would embrace mother, after-
wards in her floral gown, so tenderly, that
I would sneak in later to smell the
trace of his skin on her every thread.

After they both passed away my grief
prodded me to smell his (and her) gonenes
on my body, their last skin living in
hard, heavy knots on my face and  hands.

At  night, in the skin of sleep,
he (she) tumbles out in a
nub of bones, his (her) memories
crawling on my skin, an open wound.

You buried me
Half the world away
And a lifetime ago

Yet you find me
In your every daydream
In every foreign touch
In every what if...

Almost...
But never quite

it is without guile or guilt

more a minor shock & swoosh,

that the power to please oneself

comes so easily without interference,

new and the familiar, a mixture of

stand alone, but jumbled, mumbling &

partying in concert, inflation inflicted

words within, falling out onto personal

plains of skin of human vegetation, into

human orifices to be tongue-tasted, be

drunk by ears open for sensuality, be

touched, fondled, pressed and creased

for storing in the bank of memory, by

irrigation of eye droplets falling from

all human’s white sight~gatherers, by

nostrils flaring, reddened by waves

of excitations and pleasured anticipations,

whenever your new combinations of

words intermingle me, a step closer to

a being, drinking in additions whole,

achieving a holier than previous

experience