new justwrite

The tears in your eyes are ribbons that chase my wrists across the room and whisper that nothing's all right but they understand, came from the same box as mine and the rain before it was poured into the rivers, found my bare feet on a lemonade afternoon and reminded me that we're connected, threads in a rope in the rug on the floor of a dusty old room where the color used to live, creased now like the skin on the backs of your hands, road maps with the footprints drawn on in permanent ink, thinking my mind is a forest so you can have shade to sit in while you write poetry about fire and the scar on your left ring finger from making soap with your grandmother. It was decades ago, but you can still feel the pain if you concentrate, remember the surprise as your skin brushed the burner so I can feel it when your fingertips brush my chest, see it in your hair as you walk away, searching for sunlight like it's a secret you never told anyone, but we can see it anyway, branded into your pupils, still red coals so your fear turns to steam when you cry and the winter is melted when I stand close enough, our feet gazing at each other through the snow, and I think of puddles when they become lakes and how long until they're gone, craters left behind big enough to hold my voice on most mornings, teapot whistling, out of tune, on the stove and my hairbrush useless in my palm. Mornings feel like photographs when the light finds its way between the curtains and you shower with the door open so the water raining down blends into silence, a song that has no words and doesn't change until I really listen, more than I ever have before, and I see the drops staining your cheeks, magnifying the words under your skin. I search for a mirror, the surface of a lake with no tides, the curve of a metal teapot, wondering what you see.