Hands and Feet




Images strike through words
they tell me about you

I tug apart thick skin
that responds only to barbs
; make a window

In the basin, the water is soft

Your fingers even more

I am porcelain



Their tips massaging love
 I try to retrieve

from the log of my nerve endings


 



The firmness came later

The withdrawal is still not in my past

Like wildflower wallpaper compulsions,
your breath too is passed on

Before you discovered my failures

pushing out through that same skin,

you must have thought me precious

enough to stamp tactile memories upon



Hands and Feet

My feet 
try to absorb their calcaneal spurs
Their rough middle-aged pathetic urge
to step back into innocence
is achingly juvenile
My belly

scarred out of and into shape

tries to fit into the curve of a palm

squeezing itself into the smallest knot of guilt

for having lost a cord

The scent of your closeness is a fading shadow
like the comfort of your knee
My own 
press against my heart
There is no basin though
for the water that gushes
for having outgrown your love