Touch Poem by JAE JAE

The easy glide of toes along
the soft, flaked bottoms of my feet,
a vacation from the smell of cleaning fluid
and people who talk to colleagues
as though they were their infant children;

Your pleading tone in a sentence
spoken with muted R’s
so I know you are sorry,
a welcome break from
screaming voices and a temporal prison
of button-up blouses
and pressed grey pants—
your slender fingers following
the lines of my forearms,
guiding the bones of my
wrists to strike the right key
on a grand piano, warm and sticky
from your magic, imaginations
cut into the light air
with the same shiny black
that springs in single etchings
from your scalp, your two-toned face.

The fairy tale of fancy dresses,
the suit that gives strength to your dispassionate gait,
the thumb and pulsing forefinger
stretched to clamp a quivering chin
and pull it in, upward,
when the somber moments stand still
just for this.
And the music stops.
And the only available air
has been captured for use as a Touch
that forbids me from opening
the rest of the senses to use
in detecting
reality.