Fingerprints – Poem (2001, edit 2010)

Fingerprints on my soul,

your hands teach.

Imperfect skin of reality

permeated

slow fingertips reach deep

pressing lessons through,

senses grasping at threads

unraveling your weathered shell

a threadbare, one man battalion.

Painful,

the soft-skinned

naivete of youth.

Thoughts

spirits

left behind in traces of your fingerprints,

dissipating as a faded memory.

Forgetfulness reveals

the truth of your years.

Your trusting,

trembling fingers listen

attentive to the stories

that run

jagged tangents

swimming beneath my scars.

Skim the bends of knees,

the hollow of my collarbone.

Always my optimist

feeling out subtleties,

curves insignificant

invisible

empty crevices filled

with empty hope.

Eternity clutched in my held breath

shattered

into fragmented moments

taken for granted

and crumbling.

Your hands

ghosts,

my heart

dust.

© 2001 by Michelle Ferris

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Original: Fingerprints (2001)

Leaving fingerprints on my soul,

your hands teach me.

Pressing through the imperfect skin of my reality

with slow fingertips that reach deep

so that I might know you beyond your weathered shell

necessarily tough to hold your own in the world.

With an outward appearance of the soft-skinned

naivete of youth.

The canyons of your fingerprints,

eroded by time and experiences uniquely yours

reveal the truth of your years.

Your trusting,

trembling fingers listen carefully to the stories my scars tell.

Skimming the bends of my knees,

the hollow of my collarbone,

you fill crevices with kisses.

Always my optimist

showing me the most subtle curves of my body,

insignificant and invisible until now,

only now understanding their ability to hold

the knowledge of your love.

Fragments of time or space once taken for granted

now undeniably crucial to the education of my soul

guided carefully by your loving hands.

© 2001 by Michelle Ferris