Touch

I’m not sure if intimacy exists without touch.

Maybe it does. But touch is what makes it true.

You tell me things. How my very being is a velvet cushion between your heart and the world outside.

But I cannot feel it.

When I put my fingers two at a time across ridges of wood, I feel what is rough and real…and what is not. I do not feel that in the warp and woof of you.

You cannot tell me.

You must take the back of your hand and slowly run it down the soft undercasing of my arm. Touch my hair as you pass by my grey chair. Hold my hand when the lights dim in the cinema.

Then I know you are there.

You cannot speak to me of the “us” of things. You must slowly brush the back of my ankle when we are in bed at night and the conversation of today becomes the conversation of yesterday.

I cannot hear you otherwise. You of so many words. You of masterly speech.

You must take your lips with no emission of sound and place them at the base of my neck.

Then I will hear you.