Hands

i wish i knew 

how to fall 

god i wish

i knew

him, forever

i wish i was 

blood in the air

and bruises in his name

"what name?" 

‘you had no name’

"who was i?" 

‘you were, to me,

perfection in a name

swiftly forgotten

as i unfroze from my dream,’

isn't it odd? 

how we cease to be

as we sleep

to all but those around us

who reassure us 

we still are 

“but have you ever looked at yourself

asleep 

from the vantage of a dream?”

a watcher of your own presence

“and always

your face is blurred

but are your hands?”

your hair is as it was months ago

as you last imprinted in memory

but the fresh wound

from nervous picking at your palm

is there, 

not a second older

than

the last time you felt it

“what did we see

as ourselves

before we had the mirror 

to peacock

our ever-changing?”

‘what confronts the world

is not the face you wear 

but the hands that hold

and love 

and care for that 

which falls within its grasp.’

and i still feel

my hand clasped in yours

as i watch mine

empty

twitching

in a dream-made body

that isn't me

and to give your hands to someone

sweetly, to touch them

as a delicate

forgotten past

is to say to them

'of all the world i could

have in my posession 

i shall sacrifice it all

to let you coexist

within all that i occupy'

and it is not possession

nor a conquest

but instead the relinquishing

of your own bounds

to ask, 

for a short time, 

to experience the world as one,

to be vulnerable 

together

and in those hands, 

with

dream-like permanence

i had wanted

to love him so softly, 

so perfectly

with calloused palms

picked and dry

that made his soft edges

rough

his faraway life

gone

in my arms he felt --

cold

-- and i couldn't feel anything

-- and together we felt barren

-- and never forgot a single word

-- and i still think today, 

"what if?" 

but the answer is always the same.

i wonder if he ever reads

all the words i don’t

remember

i wrote to him

which occupy

the pages of memory

unattributed 

“do you think you will get a happy ending?”

‘no, of course not’

“but what of him?”

‘that is all i can hope’

but to him: 

‘and i am always a dream,

cryptic and soon-forgotten

yet i feel like you've never even 

learned my name beyond

memorizing the letters that make it up

and as soon as you put them back

they leave your mouth and 

are forgotten

until you need to reassemble them 

so i can come running 

back, always there

against my own 

shaking hands’

i feel the blood

in my fingers

as old as ashes

yet as new as i 

‘only in dreams 

unbroken

and only forever in

my own’