Words for Humans, pt. 2

This morning someone said to me that they missed my arms around them.

I have a tenuous relationship with gravity.

I think too much.

And I still don’t know what I should have said

But my lips still taste of salt

And my hands still burn.

I have never been embarrassed over anything

Except my own body.

My hands always shake

So I build break-walls around them

To keep them from holding on too tightly.

Instead, they wrap around others

Winding through mortar and brick and breaking us all apart

Like we are all something ephemeral

Until now, I had never appreciated the way

The half curve of my back fits into hands bigger than mine

A movement translated into time

Wrapping itself around bodies

And still I say nothing.

But I have wine in my veins

I have mead in my veins

I have cider and whiskey and these veins are not veins they are rivers

And I am being honest

While sucking the salt from my fingers,

The puff and blow and puff and blow I swear

It will dissolve me

I'll watch the grey stained youths stumble over pathways and finds hands that don't quite fit

And your hands are no less fatal than any others

But I still find it odd how you have to learn to wash them

After pissing

And before meals

And in between cooking

Like you are teaching them the act of forgetting.

So forget this

The way my fingers push apart yours

While my teeth hold on

Didn’t I tell you I could eat the whole of Italy

Folk stories and all

Until you forget that it’s all just fiction in the end.