A Thought Poem by Danielle Nguyen

I have taken this opportunity of the frozen morning-night
to reflect upon the now-cooled sweat of your skin,
the broad planes of your back upon which the
moonlight drifts, falling into subtle shallows
and the steep ditch of your spine.

Your eyes are closed, and your lashes form
peaceful half-curves above your cheeks,
and I wonder:
If those eyes were open now, and
widened as just before you smile so brilliantly,
would they have the blue-grey cast of a newly shored oyster shell?
Or would a secret green whisper through,
as though the gentle light which permeates a forest to
breathe life into the dusty earth passed through you,
touching my face with its sublime warmth.

Your too-long hair takes its vengeance against your meddlesome hands;
it splays about your face, liberated of your head-tosses, your fussing,
your half-attentive battle against obscured vision.
I love running my fingertips through that hair,
feeling the familiar tilt of your head,
the quiet sigh of your shoulders. The impossible air-texture of it.

I love taking those hands in mine, feeling their
careful strength and their honest roughness, and smiling that
I don’t mind if you don’t use lotion.

And even when you lie asleep, there is movement:
the motion of your steady breath,
the motion within me when I breathe this simple thought:




You really are quite lovely.