"calluses" poems
I don't remember, any more,
The exact shape of your hands
As I held them in mine,
Caressed them,
Memorized the length of your fingers,
The depth of your calluses.
I don't remember, any more,
Exactly your height, how much
Taller than me
You were, where
My head rested on your chest
When you held me tightly close.
I don't remember, any more,
Your scent, when we lay together
Creating our own
Magic rhythm,
Matching our heartbeats as we
Touched the sky, together.
I don't remember, any more,
The sound of your voice, calling
My name as though
It were a song
Within itself, a precious treasure
You valued with all your being.
And I don't remember, any more,
The color of your eyes, the shape
Of your lips,
Only...
How your eyes crinkled at the corners
And your laugh, as you told me,
"I love you."
Feb 9, 2011
Feb 9, 2011 at 5:26 PM UTC
I've loved many boys
With different colored eyes
But the way I remember them is
By the shape of their hands
The way their thumbs curved
Or how their palms felt against my own
The weight of them on my thighs
Or how they ran through my hair
The times they zipped up my dress
And settled on my shoulders
The moments when they grazed my own
As they handed me my keys
The motion of them as they spoke
And the motionless of them when they were silent
The smoothness of them in the beginning
And the calluses after time had passed
Sometimes, I forget the faces of these boys
Or the way their voice sounded over the phone
But I'll never forget the way it felt
With their hands intertwined in my own
Jun 23, 2018
Jun 23, 2018 at 11:45 PM UTC
I give you my trust
That belongs to so few
So old, it's covered in rust
It's been years since it grew
My trust has grown tough
Having been broken too many times
It's calluses are rough
Rougher than the skin of limes
I am trusting you
Please be careful with me
Promise you'll be true
I break very easily
I love you
That's a fact
Truer than true
It's not an act
So take my trust
Treat it with care
Lest it be dust
Crushed out of despair
May 14, 2018
May 14, 2018 at 11:52 PM UTC
My feet are disgusting and horrendous
Crooked toes and calluses tell my stories
the pitter patter of them on the kitchen floor, trying to be quit and not wake up my parents in the mornings when I was little
Always wishing they were bigger so I could get new shoes
Years wearing on my feet, scars from running into sharp corners
And yet they still hold me up
smushing them into my skates, getting calluses every week for eight years
running from one place another and are learning why every type of ground feels like between my toes
From the frozen pavement to the searing sand they have been through the harshest conditions
And yet they will never fail me
Mar 23, 2014
Mar 23, 2014 at 7:26 AM UTC
Raw energy.
Despite the stiffness in his fingers,
despite the way his fingertips harden with calluses,
the industrious pianist hammers out the same tune
that he played last night,
and the night before,
and the night before that,
and unnumbered evenings before that.
Each notes falls magically into place,
none out of tune or without purpose,
perfectly in time.
Raw diligence and focus flooding his brown eyes,
gazing deeply into the sheet music.
His yellow forehead wanted dabbing,
Steeped in his sweat.
A manifestation of his time spent in his trade.
The conscientiousness in his eyes.
The raw vitality of his weathered hands.
The way he fills each note with sentiment.
Perhaps those are what keep calling me near?
Dec 9, 2010
Dec 9, 2010 at 3:19 PM UTC
Persephone runs amok, her hair caught on tendrils of wind,
eyes lucid as emeralds; aware, alive.
Hope is sketched on her face as if drawn by whoever paints the sunset,
pulsating with the reflection of neon cities, rolling countryside,
the adrenaline-pumping moment before a rollercoaster’s descent.
She is high on happiness, running across her plane of existence
with only her converse sneakers and extraordinary ambitions.
Persephone knows she owes her unbridled youthfulness to Demeter.
Demeter, who is stern but unconditionally loving,
selfless, for when she hears her daughter’s plea for food she stops
her spoon midway through a bite.
When Persephone struggles with the perpetual torture of arithmetics,
Demeter’s sheer intelligence is astonishing, the iridescent reflection of
Persephone’s aspirations, for a problem to Demeter is merely
a hidden solution, a failure only a victory in waiting.
If only Demeter knew how her words are of the highest value,
her pleased smile the only affirmation to a job well done.
Her love cradled in the nook of Persephone memories,
every moment she is infinitely grateful to co-exist,
grateful for the Universe to award her the simple pleasure
of loving her parent with purity and stripped of conditions.
As Persephone runs, she glances back for a mere second,
in her smile is the mirror of her naivety,
she still believes that her Gods will save her from being a slave to
the inevitable corruption on Earth and Olympus,
for she is sure her untarnishable love for Demeter is her protector.
Yet, you know how the story goes.
In an instant, Persephone is falling into the Underworld, on the back of a beautiful monster into inescapable darkness.
But even then, she holds on to Demeter in thought and in prayer.
After adulthood, marriage, queenship, a childhood gone in a flash,
after her hands become worn with calluses, her face a series of rivers,
her mind expansive, her goals reached, Persephone knows she owes her unbridled youthfulness to the first person she ever loved.
I love you Dad, Happy Father’s Day.
Jun 23, 2020
Jun 23, 2020 at 10:45 AM UTC
I am the flightless pelican.
I’ve found myself with my mouth full,
my stomach full, and so much still on my plate.
Possessed by an inhuman hunger,
I will gorge upon pure potential.
I will yowl on and on, without sleep.
-
I have sand between my toes.
My shoes are glued to my feet.
Keep on running ‘til the calluses come.
There has to be a point where I stop to sweat,
and I’ll finally get my sigh of relief.
I have one ride left on my bus pass.
-
I have a tendency to ramble
and languish in my own stench.
People tend to forget this at first;
lured in by the false face of a genetic fluke.
They want to know the impression I left,
not the procrastinator; the cud-chewing goat.
-
I can’t sleep being held,
or if I feel someone’s breath in the still.
I start to feel the urge to burrow
into the quiet quilts; patchwork Promised Land.
I cater to the crowd that caters to themselves,
but I’m no Utilitarian. Fox and Lion.
-
I have cousins like brothers,
and I have brothers like strangers.
Stray cats with names
and a copy of The Mahabharata that I stash my money in.
I’m sitting on a sunny pier with my hook in the water;
avoiding conflict with no bait.
-
Paper cuts from the gold leaf
on the edges of hymn book pages
with burgundy leather covers.
These guilty cuts, bleeding for what seems like hours,
while we steadily forget that anyone was singing.
Alone with our thoughts in the crowd.
Jan 6, 2015
Jan 6, 2015 at 9:54 PM UTC
To be a good writer or a poet
You have to be good at wearing shoes other than your size
Size 1, 2, 3, up to size 10
Even if it falls off your feet or too tight, you just have to try
Not only shoes, also all other kinds of footwear
From socks, sandals, flip flops, and slippers
High-heeled, boots, flippers and sneakers
Even barefooted, if there's nothing else to wear
Then, walk with it, run with it
Feel the calluses and feelings it brings
Up until its soles are wearing thin
Then, write the experience
Jun 1, 2015
Jun 1, 2015 at 9:35 PM UTC
It’s the kind of subtle trickle
That turns the asphalt into a glassy mirror
Ripples, ripples, ripples
Over it like a black pond
The silver lining of each little droplet
Streaking the sky with shades of gray
The streetlights cast an amber glow
Upon the shimmering mist
Hiss, hiss, hiss
Against your stinging flesh
Turn your face up towards the darkened sky
Let the rainfall and streetlights wash away the dust
The dust of the souls you carry on your lips and cheeks
Etched into your back and palms
Their burdens may cause you aches and pains
Let the rainfall and streetlights wash them away
Rainfall and streetlights
Rainfall and streetlights
An urban confessional
Where the sky leans in to listen
As every perfect drop of water hits your skin
It’s the sound of a cleansing
Only you can comprehend
And although the hope of purity may have been swept away
by the wind of unfixable mistakes
It’s still the belief alone in possible redemption
That keeps you from relenting to temptation
Drink up the tears of the sky, child
You are forgiven
You were always forgiven
After all
Paths were made to be strayed from
Straight lines are mundane, they all look the same
And never give a little boy glass when you haven’t taught him
how to grasp what’s right in front of him
When he drops it
It’s a dangerous job
Picking up the sharp shattered pieces
Do not make him do it all alone
Yes, inevitably you will cut yourself
On the broken shards
Crimson teardrops
If they tumble from you
Do not distrust your calluses
You made them through your own hard work and suffering
But they can only do so much for you
Remember your skin is a shell not impenetrable armor
So it’s best to avoid the things you know will cut unnecessarily deep
Bleeding is just another way your body assures you that your heart is still beating
Looking up from the gutter the universe awaits you child
Do you not realize what’s at your fingertips?
Infinity
So don’t give in just yet
Let the rainfall and streetlights heal you
Drip drop, drip drop
Let them bathe you in warmth
Radiating
Let the rainfall and streetlights take you away
To a better place
Wherever that may be
Dec 4, 2014
Dec 4, 2014 at 1:18 PM UTC
Metal strings,
triangle pick,
painted board,
mind plays tricks.
Humming noise; the silence clicks.
Dust on frets,
bent-down spine,
aching chords,
blurred by time.
Still, I hum... though not in rhyme.
Jul 30, 2025
Jul 30, 2025 at 3:16 PM UTC
Outside two squirrels foraging
Inside one hundred and one keys tapping
Three buttons clicking and one wheel spinning
Eight hours a day sitting badly
In an ergonomic desk chair
Soft fingers tap on plastic and glass
Weak muscle memory of calluses and splinters
And sunburn blisters from another life
Outside the old prairie wind howls like a phantom
Lost in urban canyons buffets the panes
Drives the torrents of freezing rain
Hard droplets tap on metal and glass
While inside our high-rise terrariums we sit
Generating transient value that flits
Up into the clouds till whenever
You tap plastic to trade your invisible worth
For a hot meal in a disposable bowl
Ponder and sip in another life you could be
Spending all day in the freezing rain
Hunting squirrels for soup
Feb 24, 2019
Feb 24, 2019 at 4:57 PM UTC
The last time we had *** it caused something of a
deforestation, I realized that I love men so much that I could not
possibly do their work for them. Double the amount of
calluses on my fingers and toes than there should have been:
two for every inch of hair cascading my back
when fifty-year olds would grab me and make an ocean of trees.
I cannot count how many times we have left someone
ourselves or others for ourselves, there is no difference because I
feel goodbyes in the same way that I do when I think about
missing my subway train or having hot tea
burn my esophagus on the way down. We leave people as often
as I fall in love with my thirty-six inches of hair cascading.
Moments that did not matter, forgetting I was the one who
could have a second heartbeat in my belly
even stronger than the pulse felt in any man’s ****
I do not want to remember you as the man who broke my heart
not long after breaking my ***** so I emptied everything
for you and pretended it was only the phone bill
I racked up that we had a problem with.
Every call amounted to a page worth of reasons why we did not
break up when maybe we should have, there were fifty
year olds making my hair cascade like rain down my back.
A precious later reminded me that I am a woman
and so I do not have to be empty:
as full as a god, there could be two lives inside of me from you.
Jun 15, 2013
Jun 15, 2013 at 1:36 AM UTC
I’ll conceal your shifting hands,
Palms pressed,
Calluses to torn cuticles,
All thumbs and knuckles and nails,
And I don’t know her, violet-scented creeping infestation
and
How you’ve worn me down, there’s a hole in my sleeve-
And I’ve let you chew on me, sweat on me, I’ve
I’ve kept you warm
And
You used me,
You used me to conceal
illicit activities,
hands in pockets, shrugging eyes off,
never been cigarettes in there, nope,
And you let her peel me off of you, the one with violet hands
that weren’t so gentle, but violent,
voracious,
tearing in at you,
as I watched from the floor
she scratched the skin that I kept safe and warm,
and
and
Why did you leave me crumpled on the floor and then
And then let her take me home, draped over her bony shoulders
to billow like a parachute,
before she squeezed me half to death that night in her sleep?
Oct 1, 2012
Oct 1, 2012 at 1:02 AM UTC
With worthless words
In his throat
And on his tongue
He sits a thousand miles across
Through earth’s hard calluses atop bent-knuckle mountains
And soft, golden hair growing in the soil
Through lakes full with tears
And forests filled with hands and fingers...
He sits a hundred blinks of the sun
And watches drive-in theaters disappear
Along with the ferris wheels
Spinning into nothing
Dances going mute
Bodies moving soundlessly through the air
He watches lights go out in carnivals
And hands letting go
THE SUN BLINKS
With worthless words
In his throat
And on his tongue
He stands and shuffles
Through undefined shapes of colour
A brilliant array of blurred blues
And greens
And yellows
They move so
Fast
Through his eyes
THE SUN BLINKS
With worthless words
In his throat
And on his tongue
He sits
Through the drone of voices in his ears
And nods
To mask his heart
And smiles
To mask the obvious
Pull
On his soul
Dragging it down
Trying to keep it from being pulled
Out
Through the soles of his feet
A mask on his face
To hide the struggle
To keep it from
Slipping
Away
THE SUN BLINKS
With worthless words
In his throat
And on his tongue
He writes with his thumbs
Words he hopes
Can be felt
Like winds that whisper love
Through ears
And cold water
That reaches through
Skin and freezes bone
And the words return
Like rivers do
Sometimes
Missing
A few drops of water
Sometimes
A little less happy
And a little more
Tainted
With sad things
Like broke down carnivals
And quiet dances...
Ferris wheels that stop turning
And drive in theaters that stop playing movies
It becomes a little more polluted
With sad things
Like closed curtains over the sunset
Through the window
And tea that goes cold
A little more
And a little more
Until the words that return
Like rivers do
Are missing
More drops of water
And
They
Dry
Until
No
Water
Runs
Down
The
River
THE SUN BLINKS
With worthless words
In his throat
And on his tongue
He sits with lips closed
Under the mask of a smile
A mask of calmness over the worry
In his heart
Sadness masked by happiness
Tears masked by laughter
Fears masked by confidence
A mask
For every
Emotion
That his brain triggers
Except one
Because to him
No mask can cover
What she makes him feel
Such pure
Perfection
When she
Holds
His
Hand
THE SUN BLINKS
And no words come to his tongue
Or pass his lips
Silence, masked
Nov 19, 2010
Nov 19, 2010 at 1:56 AM UTC
Wait for the door by the pillar
because she’ll be back again,
with an arm around her neck
to keep her warm against cold
eyes looking down, from the surrounding guys from around the bar.
Every jackpot ever, was won in their hearts that night
in that shadow of time that they called light.
Single girls will always be watched,
and those girls with a man attached
will always seem unmatched in the eyes of the lonesome.
I waited by the door and joined in with her stride,
a pace set with vigour and pride.
Did I speak?
No, never spoke up, just let it carried on
until it lit and flared up.
When that match hit okra runway slip
everything comfortable flipped and switched
into a cushion of stone that now dismantles backs,
blisters fingers and causes calluses that stop and linger.
Hate myself?
Increasingly.
Personification was me, to her
and to me, she was just that.
I should really get in contact,
and apologise.
Nov 5, 2012
Nov 5, 2012 at 11:53 AM UTC
Tortured people tell themselves the past never happened.
They sit and reminisce about memories that they created.
Their hands are brown and worn down,
looking like a sibling of the ground that will eventually be a tomb for their bodies.
The teeth are fake and so are the smiles.
Hair falls off like rusty leaves brushed by a breeze, warning of the death of winter.
Limbs turn into string, ******* hang, and guts grow; like pregnant, stray cats.
Whenever they die, their houses will be eaten by their children, and not even a piece of gristle or a picture frame will be left.
The house will be nothing but a sun-dried ribcage:
a discarded postcard with the address marked out.
The children will sit and talk of their parents, repressing the abuse and the inability to meet expectations.
The children will work in sterile cubicles, thankful that their hands will not be stamped by calluses, yet knowing their fathers would not approve.
The children will open up the dust-blanketed boxes and stare at old family pictures, not able to recognize the people who smile and have perfect posture.
The children will lay in bed with their spouses and say, to no one in particular,
'Why was it never enough?
What did I do?
Was it me?'
The children will be tortured by these words,
by lives that weren't in technicolor,
by the paranoia of being tolerated instead of liked,
by the anxiety that a paid-off house
and nice car couldn't alleviate,
by themselves.
The children will retire and will have realized that they worked their entire lives just to enjoy ten years.
Their hair follicles will let go of strands and locks,
like a dandelion being stripped by the wind.
The enamel on their teeth will corrode and, before long, they will be thankful for the sensitivity of their teeth because the coldness of senior-citizen-discounted ice cream will be one of the few things they will be able to feel, let alone put a genuine smile on their face.
They will sit on their recliners, stare at their keyboard-kissed fingers and tell themselves the past never happened.
Because that's what tortured people do.
Aug 27, 2015
Aug 27, 2015 at 10:01 AM UTC
Forgot what I searched for to find heaven.
But I know that at the age of seven
I seized my mother’s phone and found a god.
He led me to an arresting world with strings.
Strings that swept your hair the way the wind does
when your ego would reach the sparkling skies.
They touched your heart no matter how heartless.
I refused to blink because if I did
I would miss a second of his gentle
fingers gliding across the maple fretboard.
And no sane person would want to miss that!
Strings danced back and forth as he played a chord.
Oh, his fingers grew sore, but calluses
helped desensitize them from aches and pain.
The instrument he mastered was waiting
to call him master cause’ guitars love how
he manipulates and makes them his slave.
Strings begged for his touch, for sounds they could make.
My eyes felt heavier than dense gym weights.
I mustn’t stop gazing if I want to
stay lost in heaven. So **** riveting!
“School is tomorrow.” ****** I forgot.”
“Give the phone back. Hmm, what are you watching?”
“Heaven.” “What did you say?” “I said heaven.”
Mom didn’t say anything afterward.
A few hours came, she asked for the phone.
I gave it to her, prepared my backpack.
Maybe in a different universe.
I would have proclaimed, “Don’t take the phone back.”
Jan 8, 2022
Jan 8, 2022 at 4:34 PM UTC
To be perfectly honest this was one of the more difficult poems to string together for the sheer fear of possibly jinxing it,
as there appears to be a pattern to every story involving a boy and me lately,
which begins with the same overrated butterflies in the stomach sensation followed by a poem,
sleepless nights, cigarettes, ***** and a tragic ending.
So having reached the poem stage my instincts and the part of my brain receptive to pain are already bracing themselves,
I can feel them clenching in my gut.
As this three nights stand situation burns the lines between a ***** call, friendship with benefits and something to the extent of a budding romance,
my expectations are protesting against being so fiercely oppressed,
frankly they are getting out of control,
as the dislike of not wanting to be clingy, chivalry of not wanting to subdue to any labels nor the fear of yet another heartbreak itself,
are no longer sufficient to keep these rising hopes in place.
Ironically, when I think of you I think more of who I become when I'm with you, than actually you,
even though I do sincerely adore you. Very much.
I'm bemused by how comfortable I feel in my own skin,
naked and burnished, next to your warm, ivory touch.
Each time you trail your fingers down my body and take in a quick breath as if you were seeing me for the very first time,
I treasure the look in your eyes for later in the week when the going gets tough.
I idolize your rough, blistered, bleeding palms with all its calluses for they mirror my own much subtle bruises,
representing our shared interest, commitment, strength and transformation.
Your new found superpower to completely eradicate my necessity to socially smoke when socializing with you, speaks for itself really,
and we haven't even got to the laughter, the banter, the top notch sarcasm, the conversation, the warmest embrace,
breakfast ending in a ridiculously serious spectacle of coffee making,
which I thoroughly enjoy from the best seat in the kitchen wearing your shirt which fits me far more perfectly,
and the skip in my step as I head home.
So when the day comes for the revolution, of my expectations, overthrowing this rather tiresome governance of fear,
I just might pop the question, will you be my forever one night stand? ,
in the hope that you might just say yes...
Apr 10, 2016
Apr 10, 2016 at 4:19 PM UTC
I built a home for you, out of me,
when the bricks break
it is because I have been raided. The blue sky's
not even immune to cloudbursts
the humid air lifts
to resemble some form of heartbreak.
Call it
a mushroom cloud, I go off almost nuclear.
The truth loves me enough to reveal itself
the truth loves me
even when you do not.
I've decorated the staircase with it
and discovered rope-burn,
calluses like children wanting you to just watch
what they can do
watch a ceremony. What fathers create.
I've padded its feet
with snow, the whole summer leaks with December
and my kneecaps are rotting wood.
Creaking
using garland as a noose
you know when I walk and when I sit, the truth
cannot stand for not knowing.
I've not let it lay down either,
this ****** affair. My
walls stay white and unheard of, untouched
yours are only
the cream of glue, I should have kept the doorway
shut and tied to you with a string.
Not even the truth can dissolve over a lie
(but I can, I can, I).
But
when God smells fear, he makes it happen
and God can be
a man, a woman, a lover.
Aug 15, 2013
Aug 15, 2013 at 4:02 PM UTC
I wander into this dark, misTearYous room
—and there he was...and wow! What a Fig!
He with the long, lustRuse hair,
sitting at a corner table, nursing a cup of hot cocoa.
Dang. He has better hair than I do!
“I’m a gin at Ion’s,” were his first words spoken.
“I’m a gin at Ion’s.” And then sighlens.
I was trying to look through his lens, and figure out his sighs,
when he utters, “I can see you are number—“
“Huh? I am number what? I don’t see any lines here..."
“Ah, yes you are, as I was... NumBer as in more than numb.”
Epicfunny!
He definitely got me, he with the misTearYous eyes
so I sit down and ask him what he means
(but I refused to ask how he saw through my numbity)
“What do you mean that you are a gin? And where is Ion’s?”
“Exactly just that. I’m a gin at Ion’s. A **** t’Eve.”
He tells me that Ion’s is nowhere, everywhere and knowhere,
of how anyone who takes even a sip of that gin can hold on to it—
too much, so much so, as to lose that grip on ReAhhlity...
I ask him what he does there.
Seemingly one word, two meanings—
"aMuse," says he...
He reveals he is also part-tickles, part abs-tackles
then he also exhails at wind ‘o pains,
to fog or clear up views and relayshunships...
But oh! How at one point he felt tieurd, of how he had so many callUses—
numb, tired of how it reCurse, of always being called upon, of being used
Sighlens.
Been used So many times, he didn’t know who he was anymore...
a Duke at Ion’s,
a con’s front at Ion’s,
an ex pecked at Ion’s,
a lucid at Ion’s,
a rebel at Ion’s...
Oddly enough, even if he has been ‘d sign at Ion’s,
he still felt blahtantly invisible,
even if at one point he wore only a V-bra at Ion’s!
He chalks everything up to exPeerience, and has learned from it.
And that's why he's also known as a sensei at Ion’s (his personal favorite)
He says even if he can go beyond infinity, he—
He stops (ah gain!) and yes, there it sneaked in...Sighlens.
Telling me through the void, through his sighs, through his lens
To close my eyes, and figYour out myself.
And then I do...
ReAhhlieZing how much I could relate,
how I have been in DenyAll of my possiBElities.
It is all a matter of perSpeck'tEve, of looking at each tiny speck of life,
of creating something from each of it, entire universes even—
boundless
How odd that I myself felt like I'm a gin at Ion's...
Scrunchscrunch...Imaginations.
Addictive, yes, so I best be careful with where I take it.
I oh!pen my eyes and the fig meant to show me ReAhhlity had gone...
Mar 23, 2012
Mar 23, 2012 at 1:12 PM UTC
I see you from across the room.
It’s impossible not to,
I have to look through you,
To see out the window
You don’t look as good tonight,
As his words might lead us to believe.
Good enough for him.
Good enough to write about.
He salivates over you,
Like I might over a steak.
Like you are over the poem he reads.
I may have lost you over this one.
Because he is tender.
Because he wrote one good poem.
Because he might kiss the same way he *****
**** the same way he would,
Put his thinly pursed lips,
On the curve of your neck.
But he wouldn’t appreciate your neck.
Like
I do.
He might not be spitty
Chapped from years of rejection.
I stare at your neck
I’m sorry if I stare.
I need to see out the window,
During this three hour class,
To know the world is still there.
He doesn’t know your feet.
And if he did **** you,
With your socks on or off.
He never felt the abrasion,
Of your well-earned calluses.
You always feel the scruff of my chin,
On your neck.
The neck he will never know.
**** me on my bed.
Bleed on my hard-wood floor.
Let’s get out of this place,
This three-room mansion.
We’re either better than this, or,
I am delusional.
Jun 17, 2010
Jun 17, 2010 at 7:22 PM UTC
Hello, little god,
cornered in this world of insignificance;
between sips of too-cold raspberry tea
create your own brand of madness
and label it "art."
From the blueberry stool
that is your throne, conduct
symphonies of beluga whales and
daisy chains molded together
to craft another colorful beginning.
Papercuts and calluses
are your battle wounds;
a diligent ballpoint pen
is the dog that marks its territory.
But then--
White knuckles
crumple mistakes,
transforming them into carpet-coating origami.
Your fingers keep the beat
that defines disincentive:
bmm, bmm, bmm.
Possessed
by antagonistic demons, tug
at the noose that is
a favorite paisley tie
and admit defeat.
Take another bite of your
overpriced Reuben sandwich.
Jun 16, 2012
Jun 16, 2012 at 4:06 PM UTC
she loves my calluses
she holds my hands without malice
she likes my hands
but i don't understand why she likes working man hands
she holds them as much as she can
she says i work magic
they also do work that can be tragic
the hands of a working man that's just it
cuts and scars
make my hands what they are
Apr 19, 2017
Apr 19, 2017 at 10:15 PM UTC
They walked in together with flushed faces and cold ears, after walking for what seemed like minutes in the coniferous forest surrounding the cedar cabin. Those minutes were actually hours, but when they were out here time did a funny thing and sometimes stopped all together. He hung their coats in the closet as she stripped herself of boots and socks, with bare cold feet she walked across the patterned carpet feeling its fibres between her toes. She perched herself on the couch in her favourite reading spot. He then too assumed his position on the couch allowing a space inside his outreached arm to be filled by her appreciative body. As she blankly gazed at the green life out the window, he gazed at her. Memorizing the freckles on the bridge of her nose and the way she puckered her lips without noticing. Absorbing all of her for a keepsake in case she decided to disappear as fast as she had come. This girl, he thought, is the most beautiful combination of genes and timing I have encountered in my life. But he didn’t mean physically, he meant her laugh and her stubbornness and how she believed she was spontaneous but every moment of her life was planned. It scared him how much and how detailed he saw his future, and how she was undoubtedly in it as far as he was concerned. Sometimes he wished he didn’t feel so much for her, for them. He had been hurt before and he grew accustomed to the calluses around his heart.
She breathed it all in, slowly but thoroughly. She breathed in the warmth of the burning furnace, the smell of wood that was still alive. She breathed in his sent of musk, soap, and mint. She breathed in his delicious smell of love, his pheromones. This place was exactly what they needed, some time in a surreal place to remember each other and how well they used to fit. How well they do fit. The stress and distractions of everyday life were tugging at the strings that kept them woven together. All they needed was time to be silent together, time to think together about different things. She knew that their hands and souls would fit together again like they always had, if they just gave it a chance. And now, here they were in their own made happiness. Sitting here as one piece of human, making love in the most innocent of ways.
Jan 15, 2013
Jan 15, 2013 at 4:10 PM UTC