topography

in delight I behold you
enthralled by your entire
intrigued by each part

your details are delicious to me
your intracacies thrill me
I want to trace my fingers around your delicacies
hold your complexities against my cheek
lick around your pieces

I am ravenous for you
I want to feast on your colours
dappled and pied
light and shade

I want you to paint me
with the lines on your fingertips
their angles and shapes
texture and patterns

together we make trembling shapes
I want your fingerprints
to stain my skin
I want your geography
stitched upon my body

the art of looking
of seeing with my whole body
to swim in your topography
your creases and crevices
let your lines soak into my bones

(I wrote this poem after Liv asked me to write something about fingerprints. I think she was steering me towards the unique print we leave on the earth. But when i stumbled, restless and unslept in the dark to my desk at midnight to write what was in me to be written... this came out. I think it sounds very physical, but it wasnt my intention. I just wanted to articulate the very intense capacity to desire the people in my life. To know them intimately, all of their parts, so that their lines, creases, shapes, are stained on my skin)