Skin

The night we met
was the first night I stopped making comparisons.
Left the ghost of an ex-lover tap-tap-tapping on the window
as if a sheet of glass was enough to say:
"no, you can’t come in tonight."


We left the light on. 
Because I had to see you for who you were 
and who you were was not her, which was a 
comfort beyond all measures of comparison.


Skin tells you how to touch it if you listen,
and yours has been yelling, telling stories of yes and no,
stop and go 
slow like a snail that knows the next rainfall is at least
a week away.
I listen to your skin say "right there,"
as if "there" was where goosebumps become speed bumps, 
my fingers become tree trunks
slowly growing into forests.
Skin becomes kindling as we begin smoke signaling lips to move in.
Your mouth was a bargain bin and I was looking for a deal.
It was practically boxing day when I heard your skin say 
your clothes were 100 percent off
and your concerns were out of stock.


I could listen to your skin talk for the better part of a week 
so long as it will speak to me of you,
turning knowledge into a residue whose
value is determined by how much pressure I apply
when I place my hands where you want me to.


Few are the smiles I have sought with such relentlessness,
as if to dismiss all other aspects of my life
and focus on now and how it is you came to be an answer
to the question I asked myself the last time I was alone.
I’ve grown from the head down, 
refusing to plant my feet to the ground
because only statues were made to stand still,
and I will walk to you so long as I can hear your skin say
you’ve got my back like vertebrae,
and that this constant back ache stems from the fact
that you’ve cracked these bones back into position
so that I may stand for something more than “beauty is on the inside”
or “you can make it if you try.”
I am not a goddamn symbol.
I’m just like you, I put my pants on one leg at a time,
the only difference is, when my pants are on, I’m awesome.
But you want my pants off, and that’s fucking awesome.


So you can save rum and Henessey for someone other than me
because I want to be sober for this.
You can dismiss ice cubes, candle wax, handcuffs and all that other stuff
because I refuse to believe that my touch is not enough to turn you on,
because I will touch you like going is the new drug and we’re both gone.
I want your body to be something I did wrong.
I want you to hold it against me.


Skin, continuously rolls away from us.
Like, burnt-out tractor tires which wobble to a stand-still,
that will build a foundation for empires and dynasties 
whose histories are written in books bound by our spines. 
Where there will be no lines to read between because 
we’ve been filling in the spaces with the hope 
that truth retraces its steps to find that it was always 
standing still. 
And we’ll remain statuesque until 
we are brave enough to make promises, 
so this is mine:
I will pride myself on the title of Best Friend. 
Slit my wrists on your shoulder blades 
allowing my pulse to lend life to every dead end 
then bend my breath to the shape of your heartbeat 
and beat it to make noise for the silences in between,
where honesty is the foreplay that prompts us to finally come 
clean.


Because honestly, I’ve been 
thinking of holding your hand.
‘Cause I am tired of holding my breath or tongue.
I will task each rib into a rung 
leaving ladders that lead to the top of each lung 
so you can witness where all of  my words few hung 
at the gallows of my own cowardice.


This is just to say:
I don’t imagine you
saran-wrapped in black latex
or seeping out the edges
of something tight and red.


I don’t close my eyes
to dream of your back
arched at the impossible angle
of a bow pulled tight,
encouraging your shoulder blades
to drip the blood
of stockpiled broken hearts,
but I hope the sound of you not shielding your eyes
from my blinding humility
will one day top the charts.
It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard,
and you’re the Charlie Chaplin of "you're beautifuls"
because you make me believe it
when you say it all without saying a word.


Looking at you, it occurred to me
I could sit around all day
wearing nothing but your kiss.
You make mirrors
want to grind themselves
back down into sand
because they can’t do your reflection justice.


And this just in:
I am done with those
who in life would have made me fight
an army of imperfections,
a battalion of flaws.
Tonight we’re going to keep this city up
when they hear our bodies
slap together like applause.


-Shane Koyzcan