Poem: Estranged

There was a time when we would lie

Wrapped in each other, knowing every dream,

Secrecy meaningless because I could taste your thoughts.

You found the small broken places that could not be mended,

Patched them closely with silver threads of desire and love -

Because I let you touch me the world was better. 

Often we did not need words, my favored medium,

You read me silently with your fingertips and told me to myself

With the flutter of eyelashes against my neck.

If I tensed a muscle in my cheek you saw a memory

That you could wash away with a kiss to my wrist

And one slow delicious roll of your body against mine.

Had we been able to lock the doors and shut ourselves in

I think we would have spent forever breathing each other,

Happily sustained by bright silent desire.

The world intruded of course and we lost sight of us,

One small lie and suddenly your shoulders were strangers -

A slow white blink of your eye I could not decipher.

Now I see you and it is as if I never mapped your history

In the smooth of your back and jutting sharpness of your hip,

You have crows feet that I am not allowed to taste.

I have forgotten how to read your body as I used to,

A cold handshake tells me nothing of the years that have passed,

Your perfunctory brush of lips on my cheek is incoherent.