Memory Box

I feel you stroke sunlight 
From under my skin,

Catching nuances with your fingertips

In the curve of my spine,

Kissing small collisions

Of nature’s designs

Slowly, patiently, intimately –

Your words, oscillating

Above bedspread covers,

Loosening algorithms,

White and warm in morning wake;

How they unfurl

As if extensions of our breath,

Ebbing, so slow and bare

From a palate

Grown familiar with your cadence,

With the pauses in your language,

With the way your lips taste

When you smile.

I can feel your thoughts

Trace parallels on my tongue,

Their lines stumbling upon letters

Of another past,

Where dozens of envelopes,

Filled with pages worth a lifetime of ink,

Wait for you to open them.

If our bodies could lie

Forever in this bed,

Rereading stories to each other

By touch,

Tracing light from its refraction,

And feeling nothing

But the comfort of this simplicity,

Our hearts wouldn’t have to break into postcards

Made to fit love

In five justified lines.

But we make memory boxes

Out of our minds,

And move on from moments

Of impressing nostalgia,

Saving our ellipses for another morning

Where the sheets under which we sleep

Can once again feel like they’ve been lived in.