Skin, warm and smooth.
Tiny hairs clothe the inside of your arm, pale and velvet soft. Purple veins sit under the surface, tracing jagged patterns wrapped around your fingers. My fingertips brush yours. Trail fingers upwards to the soft curve of your shoulder, brush my lips against your collarbone and follow it, swooping down, up. Your throat pulses against my mouth as goosebumps stand to attention, your hair a waving cornfield. You tremble and I inhale softness, musk and vanilla, peach fuzz. When you speak, I do not hear. I absorb your words, transmuted in vibration. I feel sound, rest my ear against your heart to understand life, strength, constancy. I am drowning, cocooned by memory, caught by anticipation, hypnotised, ensnared by the possibility of you.
Skin, taut and strong.
Long glossy hairs clothe the hills and valleys of muscles restrained and defined. Soft, corded veins contain the heat of blood and life. Your flesh retreats beneath my hand, then rises up to meet me, first shy, then bold. I map these contours of a strange and well remembered land. Your breath holds steady; mine catches in my throat. On a journey of discovery, I travel these many roads, to find and lose myself. I search this country of you, in the light and dark, on the wide plains and ridged fields, for the particular place that smells like home.
This piece is one of three poems and two short stories that I contributed to the anthology While glancing out of a window, now available on Amazon UK.