Eczematous
Mantled in scars, she'd not feel but just ogle helplessly.
Jagged against my skin, along my cheeks, on my hands.
In midnight caresses, odious blushes and explicit hushes.
In violent regressions fluent vows, lustful exchanges.
Feigned dreadfully, thought she'd never notice the texture.
Not while the lustful exploration or sifting the conscience.
Conscious I am. She said. Obdurate it is. She meant.
I'd observed them fiercely long before I'd touched her.
Committed to memory sharp angles of overbearing nerves,
Ruffing against blood and tissue, thin and stretched over,
I saw the glittering charcoal beneath her fingernails.
I killed nights, fantasizing her scrubbing them away in vain,
In the shower,furiously. It was the veins. Destined to be hers.
Couldn't let him know. She thought. Aware he was. She knew.
I'd noticed them first; those blue convexed tributaries.
And later, the delicate non-existent sweeps of her wrists.
And later still, long after sex, the way each cut would bloom
In hot weather, on her fingertips, to her lips. On my heart.
How anxiety would speed up her tight-lipped complaints.
It hurt her each time she washed her hands. She never said.
It hurt me too, to watch her itch and to believe. She doesn't know.
Covered in numbing stigmata. We'd ridiculed it perpetually.
When she was not in pain. Pondered whether, with distortion,
She might no longer have any fingerprints beneath those nails.
I wondered if destinies could be altered by an allergic complaint,
re-writing one's palms. I wanted us to have matching life-lines.
Converging identities. Inseparable souls. Bloodless handshakes.
Even if it meant re-doing my own with a knife, dagger or my heart.
Geography has healed her now. The change of climate.
Not medicines. It keeps her burning skin in tact.
Now every time she spreads her acute fingers like wings,
No flesh is opened, no blood brought forth. Just heart ache.
But with the flight of her hands which no longer care,
She jilts me instead of affection. Hates me for all I do.
Gestures no instead of yes. Eternally remain empty and nescient.
It is like picking layers of flesh from my body.
Fresh are those nights when she touched me in return.
The calluses scratching against the insides of my thigh,
And still I want to graft her pain and scars beneath the
epidermis of my heart, blend the pain with my soul.
Girl, kiss me tonight. Take me. Put your hands on me, Love.
In agonizing shame and mistrust. I too, am scarred.
PS: Eczematous: Of, pertaining to or afflicted with eczema
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