In Which She Was A Dork

It starts with a kiss.
Holy fuck, it's a doozy of a kiss
and I can't stop thinking about it.

When I finally touch you,
it feels like the first drop on a roller coaster
I'm frightened and my whole head is tingling
and I can't breathe
and I hate roller coasters, but I like this.

The way cold iron streaks down my back
and the fire rushes to my belly and
I can feel all the hairs on my neck stand up.
It's a desperate wanting feeling and I lose myself
in every second of it.
I can't decide if I like it or love it
or if it makes me sick.

I have never been in a room that felt so safe
or so on fire. I don't want to leave, every part of
me is burning.

It doesn't really start there.
It starts when I step into the room and
immediately want to take of my shoes.
I show my soft underbelly and my claws and
from a distance I watch myself resisting
the urge to curl myself around you like a cat,
social niceties be damned.
Watch the ice queen melt.
(Please don't hurt me)
(Please)

I could listen to you talk all day.
And I do.
And I wait and watch from across the room because I'm not sure
how close I'm allowed to be
how close I should be.

The thing I'll never say:
How the sound of you laughing
and looking surprised by your own laughter
made my stomach free fall.

I will never be satisfied

The poetry is made up of the way
the hair stands up on the back of my neck
the way I can listen to his voice for hours
I could beg him to tell me a story or read me one and
I'm dying for the way he does.
I can't quite replicate the feel of his hands on my face
and throat.

"Tell me when you are lonely,"
she says.
"I wish I was there or you were here.
I'd run my hands through your hair and
hold your hand.
We'd be pack together with the cats and the dogs."
I don't tell her that I'm thinking about long red hair
twining through my fingers as I fall asleep and
I don't tell her that I'm thinking about buzzing tattoo guns
and acoustic songs via Pandora at one in the morning
because she knows
and I know.

I tell her about feeling fire down the iron of my spine.
I tell her how Pablo Neruda makes sense for the first time,
how he feels reachable now.
How I don't feel like stone anymore.
Ugh, I tell her, I was never built to feel things.
I was formed in chaos and he throws that feeling of order into everything.
She is laughing and crying
because even hours away,
through snow and miles
she knows when my hands are shaking.

Even though I'm trying,
I can't reproduce the feeling of hands and hair and lips and teeth
roving and roaming over my skin.