I Want To Read The Stories On Your Skin
I want to trace each part of you underneath my fingertips until I know, until I understand.
I want to trace each part of you underneath my fingertips until I know, until I understand.
Moving forward is brave and more than enough.
Sometimes we get so caught up in the things we’re supposed to do, in the places we’re supposed to be, even in the words we’re supposed to say that we forget the little things.
The freckles on his skin. Or the birthmarks, the scars, the little imperfections that he pays no attention to, that doesn’t think about. You notice these tiny things, memorize them.
We let ourselves be defined by the ways we’ve been treated wrongly and we put up walls in hopes to never be burned again. All understandable, at first. But eventually you have to chip away at that tough exterior.
Eventually you have to learn to let people back in.
Listening to what they say with attentiveness.
I wish I could make sense of your mind
the way I’ve always been able to make sense of my own.
Thoughts that slide so easily into poetry, into neat lines
and verses and words with a rhythm, calculated and perfect.
I will never be sorry for how we sacrificed ourselves as we stumbled through, learning how to love another person when we were still trying to figure out who we were.
If they’ll stay. Because they’ve already stayed, stayed enough to prove they’re never leaving.
I don’t believe in goodbyes. I don’t believe that the connections we have to people and things are temporary. That somewhere along the way they cease to exist, cease to carry meaning, cease to be something real.