Not a word

Watching you
bewitch the guests with tricks
learned from forest beasts.

Waiting for your smile to meet mine
between an encounter with a wolf
and the sun among your trees.

Trying to determine
the ways in which a year changed you,
the ways in which a year changed me.

I find a place right below
my fifth rib to stash the thrill of
having you this close,

because I know you flee
at the sense of a maudlin word
and this time, I'd like you to stay.

(Shared with The Real Toads)

Five in ten thousand

Rigil Kentuarus 

Five years of distance,

five years of post office mistakes,

five years of undelivered affection.

Come the final hours

to the end of the world,

I'll wish we could sit outside and read

the universe on each other's palms

as we used to when we were young.

Tsih

I followed the spark in your eyes

and spiral danced around you like a beetle

before losing them for the dark night.

We learned each other's pitch

by watching words

come to light in the blackness

and used our hands to protect them

as if they were fireflies.

El Nath

A list of ways in which love is concrete:

in paper folded  boats,

in balloon elephants,

in black tea when I'm sick,

in a tangible invented world,

in the books we read,

in the waiting for Godot,

in Magritte.

Girtab

No one else finds me awake

after the 2 a.m. train,

I am not there for anyone else.

 I'm carried into my dreams

 by a whistle,

gradually fading in the separation,

sure to be soon lost in the distance
when you don't come.

Mirfak

You trigger me to

stare at my own spirit.

You wrap me 

in different strengths.

I show you the roof of my mouth

and am posed with your vast rib cage -

who would have thought 

of  a better hiding place?

(Shared with the Imaginary Garden)

The touch of dust

Dear M, I was there
when you left your coop
for the first time

a latent desire to
raise higher flights

you flailed your wings clumsily
and only sustained yourself in the air
 for a few seconds if that.

What I meant to tell you then
is that a body is a traveling cage
bound to the ground by the law of gravity

there is no freedom
in the tangible physicality

it's the touch of dust which
teaches we are made
of the same thing.

Like a bull in a china shop

For every tear I ever dropped there is now a crystal in my left kidney,

making it harder for light to travel through my body,
making it more difficult for me to choose radiance.

I had the choice to never let anyone else close to my heart.
But then there was you and I wanted you to see it so bad
I laid down my sword and shield and let you in.

You made your way inside me
like a bull in a china shop.

Touch

A list of ways in which we
haven't touched each other yet:

Your chest, my head.
Your lips, my breasts.
your hands, my thighs.

Your legs, my hips.
Your feet, my feet.
Your tongue, my sighs.

My back, your nose.
My teeth, your ears.
My arms, your fears.

My fingers, your days.
My scar, your weight.
My truth, your eyes.