My skin cells call out to you 

Forgotten palms held empty for your touch  

Is lacking and I am not 

More than smoke 

Figures in the dust left hollow 

Where ghosted touch  

Has swollen me with  

Absence 

Come back to me here 

Loved one 

Hold this body with yours 

Empty as I am of 

All that is us 

I cannot even breathe the scent 

Of my own skin without 

Seeing you  

 

We are without each other 

And without 

The other has become other 

I do not recall the shape of your lips 

But my skin remembers them 

Soft and succulent 

Moisture throbbing 

In iridescent kiss 

 

Time curls its choking 

Tendrils swooping about my throat 

The clock is counting 

The hours winding down from 

Our last goodbye 

At that station where my heart is 

Still pumping empty blood 

Onto the platform floor 

 

I will remember for 

I cannot forget  

The feel of us cradled in each other 

Skin on skin and pulse to pulse we pound 

Each other into life 

And curl about the flames of 

These ‘I’s’ we’ve fought so hard to build 

And are learning can be loved 

 

Loved as loving should be done 

Down in the earth where the worms 

Are loving the soil into being 

Squirmy in their lust for 

No more than what they are  

We are skin packs 

Souls crammed into bodies claimed as ours 

We have forgotten what it means to be alive 

 

This is alive 

This thing right here that’s happening to us 

Right now  

Where you are and where I am 

Impossibly possible 

Is this touch of ours that  

Straddles times back and  

Reins her in for its own pleasure 

 

For I feel our skin on skin 

Soft and supple somatic conversation  

Conversing over boundaries 

That never did exist for 

I feel your breath on mine and 

We are what we are and 

We do not need to love for the simple reason that 

We Are Love

illustration by @katcassart