My fingers can’t reach you
My kisses are carried away by the wind
But these words, my words
Do you feel them?

I can’t speak the way I write
I can’t write the way I think
So many words get lost
In the spaces in-between. 

In the dark of night

Our words weave a blanket

Each syllable from your lips

Battens against stories I share

Secrets warp and weft

Tongues bind threads

As hands lock together

The blanket grows between us 

Until we can gather beneath

Finding warmth.

Does it hurt the small buds

Of spring to push up

Through the dirt

After a long cozy winter

Bedded down in the ground?

Do they feel shy

Blooming naked before

A bold sun?

Do leaves weep as

They lose their grasp

On trees and fall

Gracefully to be crushed

By so many passing feet?

Do they feel bitter

That trees cast them

Aside so easily?

My mouth is a graveyard

The thoughts in my head

Expire unspoken on my tongue.

Words are an ugly substitute

For smiles and shy gazes

Poetry is insubstantial

Compared to the faintest touch—

A fingertip brush

I’ll save what there is to say

Hoard these thoughts inside

Letting them press and push

All other things from my mind

Mentally consumed by you

Until the time when

Everything can be shared in silence.

You asked me

Why I don’t like hugs—

Was that rhetorical?

I can never tell between

The two and I skirted

The issue as I am apt

To do when put on a

Spot, twirling away

In my dress

Suddenly afraid of you

Of what you might

Learn of me 

But hopelessly hoping 

You might ask again

Because it’s not that

I don’t like hugs

It’s that I like you

Too much.

I spend my nights wishing

We were kissing

All those things you said

I’ve forgotten

If I ever heard them 

I was too distracted by the stars

In your eyes

By the waves beating the shore

Their pounding echoing my heartbeats

To hear your words

If only I could as easily forget

All the things I was too shy to say—

Why were we never more?

Is scar tissue stronger?

Because the wounds have

Healed but their marks

Remain, the tide goes

Out but the undertone

Still pulls me in.

Even when I’ve grown

Old and weary

I’ll still be dancing

In a photograph.