Midas Touch

Can human touch fill what we long for as we fall asleep
Collide and pretend you are really reaching for eachother.
He searches for water, his well has run dry, leaving caverns behind, your skin tastes like water, liquor, lover, answer
Woman, he will try to fill the caverns of his mind with the contours of your body
You are searching for a mirror, what is this skin, you wonder, what am I made of, you think his hands can tell you
Woman, does he make you feel beautiful, stronger, like the gold King Midas touched
he is not an alchemist
And you are not made of cold, hard, metal mined from the middle of the earth.

You are not made of glass
No matter how much you curve yourself, trying to bend the light around his eyes, you cannot make him see you any clearer.
You were not made from his ribs.
You are made of the sweet grass God set down beside the river, holding the soil together in rain.

You are not the moon
No matter how fast he tries to spin you, do not orbit
Do not accept this motion sickness as your punishment
Woman, you are not the cry he feels calling in the dark.
You are not a message in a bottle, floating to a lost island, do not try to write the message.
Find your own poem in the sand, be the waves, breathing in the edges of the shore without worry of what floats across their open arms.

When he traces your skin like brail and does not find the answer he was looking for
When his chest recoils in the caverns he thought would turn to gold by now
When he holds you, and his hands show strained veins, punctured from too much reaching
You were not the needle with the poison
You are not the bottle with the cure
Do not treat yourself like an elixir, do not let him drink you like liquor
The only liquid inside you runs straight through your heart and lungs
Woman, your skin is the only life that it can water, you will be stronger
By keeping your four-chambered waterfall from beating outside its stream’s veins
These are your lungs
And they can only carry
your voice.

King Midas only wanted the world to glow again
when he touched you and found rock in his hands.
Woman, you are not made of gold.
You are golden-sand, dandelion, sunflower-seed laughter and dance.

Hide and Seek

I don't know if I lose things or if they lose me. 

Keys always seem to slip themselves between bedsheets, phones behind couch cushions, thoughts behind tree branches. 

I retrace my steps, run in circles, I'm sure it's up there in those leaves somewhere, if I could only reach high enough, no, it's lost, it flew away, I run in more circles, I run in to you sideways.

You say, it's around here somewhere.  I am sure of it.  Are you sure you aren't tracing the wrong footprints? 

Soon I start to recognize yours.

And the things we searched for.  

Keys. Constellations. Holes in the bottoms of our shoes. 

Oceans. Answers. Misplaced term papers.  

Maps.  Pavement promises. 

That thing that holds tires down and keeps your keys from sliding off the earth as it spins
when you leave them behind.  

I think it's called gravity? 

And the things we found.  

Empty coffee mugs. Vocal chords.  Rain.  

Hands, eyes, hair left in the shower, broken body parts between our ribs.
Sparks lit in our hands at sundown.
A stomach full of laughter and a mouthful of "remember when-".

The bones within the arches of our feet

that absorb the shock from running.  

We watch each other stick things behind couch cushions, like children bringing in rocks from the garden, things we think we're not supposed to have.  We hit each other in the face when we tear apart the sofa searching.  We hold each other on bathroom floors.  We chase each other down interstates, saying, I know what you like to hide behind your tree branches, where you like to build nests between your shoulders, not knowing what songs your ribs can sing at sunrise.  And when I walk away empty handed, you notice what was missing.  You take me by the hand and tell me, 

Honey - did you know that it was here all along? 

And as I turn my key in the ignition, tires held to pavement a bit later than we planned,

as we scatter like cheatgrass across highways, 

you will still stick yourself to the inside of my shoe. 

You will be always in my rear view mirror
reminding me not to leave important things behind.