An extract from a book i'll never write | Poetry |

Eighteen: PERFECTION

There is a girl in my class who looks like she could catch a bird out of the sky with her bare hands: A gentleness, I cannot mirror, though I long too:

Her words fall from her mouth like autumn leaves, She speaks like she has been Kissed by fire, as embers lay on her body, sparking her beauty. 

I have forgotten how to pray: this is not to say that there is no divinity here between us, in this, merely that I do not know what to do with it-

God presses His fingers against my closed eyelids with so much tenderness that I wish the fruit had truly killed me
it is too much.

Hands that aren't mind glide to my outstretched fingers, yearning for both of them to be intertwined once more. A touch that is almost invisible traces my palm like they are treasure wanting to be found.

Let us pretend for the space of this moment, that my hands, my mouth, could pluck, unprotected, the fruit of the cactus out from between its thorns and come way unbloody.

That if I could unbind and breath deeply and the sunset would drip from my eyes and trace my checks like tears.