Maybe after all these years of understanding your silence
For once, I didn't get it
When you spoke.

Before it is finished...

I have come to touch you.
To put my fingers in your hair - oh!
it must be thick and strong
does it stretch or curl? - run,
through parting until somewhere, there,
I feel little depressions where a crown was once fitted.

I have come to touch you.
To run the side of my thumb down your spine - oh!
It must be straight as an arrow
each vertebrae precisely placed - stroke
and find a story everywhere, there,
written across your back in rivers of scars and hills and mountains of knotted flesh.

I have come to touch you.
To slide my palms along your shoulders - oh!
how strong they must be, they bore, the tree and the world - rub
gently down your arms until there, where,
your slender wrists met the forge, there,
there is my heart become stone.

I have come to touch you.
To bow low and reach for your feet - oh!
how beautiful they must be, we,
deign to wash them? - touch
the tender place there, somewhere,
where in roses
sprung in indescribable perfection of
torn tissue and ripped muscle, spouting
spewing, spitting blood, blossomed
everlasting life.

I know
deep inside, strong inside, unshakable, immovable
that you. have me.
Lungs burning body cringing every hair reaching for you.
I fly for you.

You know
I write you poems because
deep inside, strong inside, unshakable, immovable
you are beautiful
Only, now, your eyes explode me your voice unmakes.

But enough.
of seeing
and hearing.

Now come.
touch me.
Break my sternum crack my ribs rip through my lungs pound
diamond to dust.
crush.

So I can finally give you the one thing you ever wanted.

Psalm 51:17 The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.