were ready for this,
our threads are tangled
enough already as it is.
I’ll say it’s a story and nothing more,
leave some mystery at the end that
only we possess the clues to,
intimate prose like a folded
note I keep wherever I go.
But I could never bring myself
to hand it over to you.
Keep me there fiercely protected,
coveted and engraved in shadow
as undulant skin ripples beneath
these hands once seized.
I’ve been able to measure time
by the sway of your body,
the loving warm intervals,
the soothing meter plucked from
the darkest hollows that make me.
And it only makes sense now
to arrive at such a precise standstill,
to note the hush yet feel where need
clasped around me like burning ring,
laced the tapering sweep of this essentia,
a lamp I kept dimmed for all others.
I don’t know where the mystery
can begin to peel away, either,
where one relents like the breath
that snuffs out a candle’s glow
and the other possesses the final
memory of this tangled radiance.
I’ll say it’s a story and nothing more,
leave some mystery at the end
for others to etch a legacy upon,
mine their own clues and formulas,
it was something more intimate to me,
rooted to my core in ways
that you could never know.
Folded and kept like a handwritten
note that I never handed to you.
Keep me engraved there,
in shadow and sweet mist,
measured by the ripples
your soothing hands stilled.
And in such a precise hush,
I never stop sensing where
need seized around me,
the wick helpless when ablaze.
