Memory

In sleep, goosebumps serenade  
my skin and your whispers  
 gild the frames  
 of each thought pressing  
 through my lungs.  
In this dream, I have finally  
 beheld your eyes.  
 I finally know you beyond  
 the brush of your fingertips,  
 the sweet tendrils  
 of silk that is your hair  
cascading against my neck,  
knotting with my own.  
 This is slow.  
Each facet of these moments  
 do not yet cluster until  
 we evaluate their contents  
and measure the acidity  
of the other's venom.  
 In your lap, I draw invisible  
 patterns across your forearm,  
as you teeter very slowly.  
 I calm to the thudding rain.  
 As once, it was steady as your pulse,  
 now pushing alongside  
 its passion with a fever  
I haven't known.  
 With the traces I paint  
across your flesh, I find I am  
 contagious with these goosebumps  
because they leap to hug you, too.  
Your lovely voice molds  
 into the melody of the wind,  
 in perfection, it carries along  
these walls to consume  
the cold dark of night.  
That lovely voice is indeed  
more comforting than the drowsy  
chills and blindness of nocturne.  
You didn't have to look my way.  
 Your eyes still haunt me,  
to this very day.
The heat of your cheek
 caresses my own, you're so close;  
 the vibrations mimicking the notes  
dancing across your tongue  
 and the swelling of your chest  
presses through my defenses,  
sinew, my bones and marrow  
 to that unseeable apartment  
 we all aquire.  
You affect me.  
You are the colors I see  
and the beauty held by them  
 that must be found  
 in ten million fractions, pigments,  
with every tilt of the head,  
every memory, surely,  
every set of eyes that have  
 understood both the depths  
 of that dark as well as the  
splendor of light's youth,  
yes, surely.  
 A song so seamless lulls  
above us in those ten  
 million fractions, droplets,  
 transparent as all the  
 faces in dreams; that rain.
[i]Oh, turpentine, erase me whole.  
 I do not want to live my life alone.[i]  
The sweetness expended in this place  
cradles something fragile,
a thing not meant to be let go,  
 but does supress a dangerous  
 haven from reality,  
from when I wake from you.  
This is slow.  
Your low hum expels  
 my tired brain,  
 protects the chilling,  
 prickling surface of my skin,  
 of my lungs.  
 You delude me wholly that  
 enthralling serenade, a lie that wants  
desperately to be a truth,  
it cuts away its bad edges,  
exploits its virtues,  
 and sells diamonds for nickels.  
Oh, it is in my dreams,  
that slumber illustates something  
 wanted so badly to rid the lonliness,  
the truth that you do not exist  
 is scattered across the planes  
of my long-weathered hopes,  
and that truth does  
 deepen its scars in spite.  
In sleep, goosebumps plague me;  
 they leave the wind raging,  
 accomplicing the howls of  
 thunder and the ocean from the stars.  
"How I find myself without you,  
that, I'll never know."