Chance / Haptics That I Finger Paint

Sunny day picnics on the beach.
Seagulls overhead, trying to catch the wind.
That’s how it felt to me that night,
You were so cool when I saw you.

We were dressed business casual that evening
As the sound of shit-chat resonated loosely
Through half full wine glasses.
I wasn’t, presently, engaged.

We exchanged side glances like adolescent notes
In fourth period biology:
Do you like me? Circle the answer.
Yes
No

I paid you no mind overtly (because that’s how the game gets played)
But stole glances to stash in piggy banks,
Rationed out for rain days, and, for a while.
Nothing.

I had a conversation with my reservations the other day.
Your name came up, mostly in the context of
“I wonder if,” and “what would have been.”
She always knows how to push my buttons when we speak.
I wasn’t looking when I found you, so it’s no surprise that when I fell,
I fell so deep.
So, so deep.

It’s funny, when my conversations idle,
[and what would people say by the way? Would they whisper when they speak?
“He’s not fooling anyone, the way he looks at her,”
“the way he looks at her so deep.”]
And when my conversations idle.
My thoughts return to you like an Escher painting.
Feigning composure when I speak, as settled as a tea cup
In an earthquake.
Waiting for me to take a chance.





Your very thought plays gingerly across my back
Like finger tips along my spine
Strumming each nerve like the strings on a guitar.
You know what you do to me.

The curve of your hips beneath my fingertips
Could be my currency, it’s so precious to me.
Concurrently, these haptics form sketches in my mind.
You are my palette when I finger paint like this.

You lay there by my side for hours counting
Fingers and toes pointed at the sky at
Daydreams while we dream awake.
Meanwhile, time stretches, blinks twice, weary,
And curls back into its sleep.

I might call these days perfect if I didn’t fear finality so fiercely.
So instead, I watch you in front of me
In that way that makes everything appear
Like scenes from an old home movie.

You laugh when we play, you cry when it hurts,
And you tell me you never want to leave.
Just allow me to steal on more touch before the sun sets
And takes another day we’ll never get to see again.


So, this was a little valentine's day challenge to myself, a side project of sorts. I wanted to see if I could write something before vday to share with people, and I did. I wanted this to be three poems stuck together, but I kinda' ran out of time. Either way, I think I like the two I have here. Maybe I'll go back one day and write the third in the series. Happy vday everyone, hope you find all that you're looking for in life.

Journey's End, Part 6

Click here for part 1

Chapter 6: The Song

In his last moments, Journey couldn’t help but feel the reality of the fact that all travels must come to an end. His half writ saga had been punctuated for the final time, like a poet lacking the constitution to write in absence of his muse. Given to fits of whimsy, he simply places a period and declares the story concluded. He had spent one too many summers in this house, and he longed for the days when he ran from autumn rains. Rain drops dancing blithely on idle window pains, and his warmth wrapped securely in her arms. She held him tightly, yet gently. He slept. Somewhere inside him, he knew he had never moved passed those autumn days, and that when he left that day his spirit failed to make the trip with him. It had been trapped in a purgatory of his own construction, walled in by the errors of his past. She looked down at him with her impossible green eyes, fallible in their perception. They blinked, but did not shed tears. She did not cry for him. Instead, as she held his head, she sang a song for him, a prayer she had learned, while sirens screamed the songs in keys of dissonance. In his last moments, they both thought the same thing; perhaps the story had been concluded, but finally Journey had been allowed to be free.