not to touch
for Christain who made me beautiful

I read Neruda with you
in a dream that was
worthy of your untamed mouth,
your heavy eyes, that
hold the deep night's velvet;
your roughened hands, impossible
not to touch

I woke, with you
my eyelids,
draped by May’s first dew, then
opened to cold solitude
a emptiness caressed
by dawn’s orange fingers
your touch fleeing on chaste butterfly wings
I become crumpled,
a weary memory
steeped in bleeding rainbows
imbued with my fear

my love, a transparent child
cries soft round tears
that float up and leave my
tender kisses in the
pure whiteness of clouds

I disappear
on this blank page
shattering in silence.