#fingerprints
I bring her coffee, plus a custom made admixture of
kashi-go-lean and fruited loops,
and an almond biscotti with fresh berries,
to wake her up, @9:30AM,
since s-h-e, bad girl, been watching
some Jane Austen stuff (duh) till the AM of Three,
will dare to try to get away with sleeping
the holy moly entire Sunday -a!way;
quite a lot to carry, and sadly cursed with but two hands,*
so various prints from nose, and toes, fingered tips and and upon
an occasional, full on five on five, a free single hand print
on a mirrored bedroom door
behind which she hides
now when the light hits said door,
every smudge is crystalline clear,
and my OCDC insists I tsk tsk take
my sleeve to rub them out of existence
she loves this cleansing idiotick-oh-synchrow-nieceity o’ mine,
and smile lovingly while observing my back acleaning…
what an idiot, she thinks,
she forgets,
I see her every move,
because I am before a rear facing mirror
revealing her
espying me with loving for a man who cares enough
to rid the world of smudges, curmudgeons and peeps
who write poems way too excessively
so clean up this
poetry smudge in aisle five,
and we can both get a laugh n’ a giggle,
on her foible-a-bility
Mar 29
Mar 29, 2026 at 10:43 AM UTC
I want to erase the fingerprints
I leave on your days, weeks, and years,
To drain through the gaps
In your floorboards,
To float through life,
Unable to embrace but
Too incorporeal to be slapped.
I need to
go.
Oct 18, 2024
Oct 18, 2024 at 10:11 AM UTC
caught her cleaning the fingerprints off of the mirrored door,
using the ever handy bathrobe sleeve,
fabric of a thousand utilities, this one too,
me wonder, whose prints? mine, kids, hers,
could they not have remained as a history,
highway road marker, “On this site here…”
more fingers, skin-oiled, will return, the chain
unbroken, for mirrors collect memories, faces seen,
matched to prints of hands that traversed this doorway,
on the way to where, it don’t matter, signs of humans
that come and gone…erasure troubles me…not
because cleanliness is next to godliness, cause
god is mighty messy and a few prints ain’t gonna
make a big difference…but
she espies me lazy observing, annoyed, she chastises,
her reproving noises fail to include a thank you for
prints mine, most fresh, carried two mugs of coffee minutes earlier,
part of my daily chore, and a morning*
I love you, *an essay that is perfect in its abbreviation,
like a short poem sweet, so I hid my head neath the coverlet,
lest she see, me & a well hid grinning smile
sipping coffee even more
contentedly
poetry and love is and always found in the oddest places….
Oct 21, 2023
Oct 21, 2023 at 9:28 AM UTC
what do you do when you have placed your heart in the hands
of who you have come to know as your home for safekeeping,
but those hands that lead butterflies to your stomach when placed against yours,
have left fingerprints on your heart so deep
there are more craters than there is left of you,
to love
Feb 3, 2022
Feb 3, 2022 at 7:22 PM UTC
written across my anatomy,
a brilliant Poetica:
lips part/
line breaks
the dimple in my jaw
an
a
c
r
o
s
t
i
c
clavicles
mere sisters of verse
fingerprints are but
whirlpools
of apostrophe and quotation
the trellis of my ribs
composed of
stanza
behind
my papyrus heart
dwells
every beat
a turning page--
and this is my story
Apr 30, 2021
Apr 30, 2021 at 2:17 AM UTC
The way you didn’t kiss me
at the top of the Ferris Wheel.
The way you kissed me
at the bottom of my sense of self.
The way I had your fingerprints on my thighs for 2 weeks after you left me.
The way I want you
to leave me wanting again.
May 1, 2020
May 1, 2020 at 2:58 AM UTC
all these poems I write
start with I,
I swear I’m not self centered
but they say write what you know.
So in a desperate attempt
to learn this soul of mine
All I write about
is me.
And you,
Yes, I write about you.
I write about the beauty of you.
Of how I would love to leave fingerprints on your heart and caress your soul .
I mean if you would allow me
To love you
Freely.
Oct 10, 2019
Oct 10, 2019 at 9:28 PM UTC
Do I spin on this wheel of fortune forever? Offering slices of my heart like a bake sale. Or should I look at you with glass eyes? The world is full of dormant men who love the emptiness of women. A vacant place behind her eyes that says I’m no longer here. I had to pack and retreat long ago because I’m too scared. I’m scared of you. I’m scared your hands are too rough to reach into my chest. Your hands are fickle. No fingerprints. I’d say I miss you but a man without fingerprints can’t leave a mark.
Jun 26, 2019
Jun 26, 2019 at 4:54 PM UTC
Finally, at last.
I thought you'd never leave my mind.
But today, for the first time in 142 days.
I didn't woke up,
Thinking about you.
Surprisingly, I never thought this was love.
Just a stupid remedy,
For a self broken heart.
But dispite the fact I'm not thinking about you.
You still left your fingerprints on my skin.
And your voice in my ears.
< >
Mar 17, 2019
Mar 17, 2019 at 4:19 AM UTC
i scrub and i scrub and i scrub
but nothing can erase the fingerprints you have left on me
because they are imprinted in my memories
and i can still picture where your fingers have been
Mar 4, 2019
Mar 4, 2019 at 11:42 AM UTC
Memories
Like a fistful of sand
Leaky and incomplete
Something I can't grasp
Like talking in my sleep
Memories
Of dreams in daylight
Of things that never were
Like reflected starlight
Music gone unheard
Memories
Of cold nights and warm lips
Of skeletons and their prayers
From buried paths they slip
Abandoning their lairs
Memories
Like a stream in the night
It's darkest depths concealed
Memories
Like snow's last flight
Melts as it's revealed
Feb 15, 2019
Feb 15, 2019 at 1:07 PM UTC
Beginnings and endings
Marked by unique tombstones
Each a fingerprint
Of great creators
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 7:06 PM UTC
Nai,
We walk different jungles
Sun spliced in different skies
Split by a slab of blue
Yet I hear
You
Me, here,
Walking the paths you sing of,
Making hands of the words you speak,
Arriving at the memories you've wrung like a
Needle stuck in my mind
You
Sing like your soul is on fire.
Purring of quiet as silk;
Lungs weeping raw in
Consonant melody sifted in
Soil
Oil
Spilling off palms
Soaked in the blood sun, and
In all my wandering--
I can't help wondering if, in the end,
I discovered you
For a reason
--
c
Apr 27, 2018
Apr 27, 2018 at 3:08 PM UTC
Menagerie…by Jessie 6/06
Too many days are all the same
The will has left, the inert pendulum silent, no longer marking time
Glass menagerie collecting dust
A ghost town of frail figurines
Lifeless the sheen, pail from coatings of yesterday
Not even the trace of a fingerprint to announce interest
Tawas a time, excitement from the prospect of a new-collected piece, while much deliberation was given to its placement
Diligently, maintenance provided, dusted and polished
Imagination carrying fantasies of amusing situations and images
Laughter recounted when viewed by innocent eyes
Now the foundations mirrors will not reflect what was or what is
Each days accumulation, another layer, each layer a little duller
Soon the only connection, a web, thin and translucent, linking one to the other
Paralyzed fragile pieces of glass, drowning in a sea of negligence
Your name whispered into a box of mementoes
Awaiting for renewed curiosity of another generation
Feb 10, 2018
Feb 10, 2018 at 2:59 PM UTC
Her ******* were like damp snow,
teasing but letting my fingers
tread lightly.
She felt ever motion, the imprints
of my wonderings were left
in the cotton of damp fingerprints.
I never went below the snow,
sometime
just treading lightly,
is enough to make her moan.
Dec 13, 2017
Dec 13, 2017 at 10:06 AM UTC
Your fingerprints mark every inch of me
Coating my words and reverie
Replaying your words like an old cassette
Your smile became my safety net
You awakened my soul in loving me
Bless you, darling sanctuary
Sep 16, 2017
Sep 16, 2017 at 12:52 AM UTC
He licks me like I'm fragile.
Like I'm so unique, so delicate, so irreplaceable, that one false move and I could be gone forever.
He leaves prints on my skin and comes back to retrace them the next time we lie in bed together.
Surprised to see that his fingerprints existed on me hours before.
The first time I sat on top of him and wrapped my legs around his waist,
I heard seagulls in the distance.
I felt the last traces of sunlight fall behind the hills and I smelt the warm river water,
the smells of the earth kept me grounded,
placed me closer to the moment with him.
My body fell,
the way his skin seemed to trace mine so perfectly.
I didn't have to escape.
I could shoot my eyes open and watch the scenes of the empty beach
while I felt him push deeper inside me,
felt his teeth sink into mine,
felt his fingers curl
around the places I needed him to touch.
I inhale the moments where he keeps his eyes on mine,
where he says my name,
where his hands slowly slip my pants off.
I gulp them up and swallow them whole,
doing everything in my power to absorb the time I have.
The time he is here,
he is present
and he can't resist me.
I feel him in scenes,
I hold my breath waiting for the plot to change on me
and I kiss him in the spaces that smell close to home.
I wait until the morning sunlight slips in through my window,
the red sun illuminates the dashboard, his hand travels to my thighs
and I whisper what I want to say,
what I shouldn't say.
Sep 4, 2017
Sep 4, 2017 at 2:38 AM UTC
You were a storm that ruined her.
She was a piece of land who delightedly endured you.
She asked for rain, you gave her hurricane.
And after you're done, you left her ravaged.
But that's fine, she was an artwork;
And she still is.
She gave herself to you, but she'll never give herself to anyone else.
Your paint was the only thing spilled to the canvass;
Her canvass.
And if we are to dust her heart for fingerprints,
I'd be certain we'd only find yours.
Oct 9, 2016
Oct 9, 2016 at 1:45 AM UTC
sometimes love is not relentless
but like the soft smiles we keep
safe for goodbyes
it sleeps. a playful
child gathering breath.
don't you see that i love you?
but you will know it
in the ceilings of uncertain places
in the fingerprints on your beer
in that shirt you forgot about
but you'll wear it today. now.
our hearts will look onwards.
we are only at rest.
Apr 26, 2016
Apr 26, 2016 at 12:59 PM UTC
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.
Mar 28, 2016
Mar 28, 2016 at 11:36 PM UTC