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
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