heart

when your fingers
traced lines on my body
so slowly, so hastily

I did not know they were
wrapping around my mind, tugging
at the heart ever-so-gently

until they took it and
deposited it in your hands
to do with as you will

I woke up, empty, trembling

words

take my heart
I don't want it
leave me words

burn

peeling off the pictures
of you under my eyelids
slowly bleeding

scraping off these memories
from my face of your fingers
gently tracing its contours

your hands in my hair
your sweat in my eyes
I closed them

only to have you
slip inside my mind
and stay there

these hands that touched you
they should be smashed,
cut off at the wrists

these fingers sliced away slowly
for they hold your fragrance still
[I hold your fragrance still]

this heart that showed itself
to you too soon, traitorous
beating, eating inside my chest

tell me how to unpeel
my skin; your eyes
touched everything

tell me how to empty
myself of all this blood
that sings for you

you said men burn
but women, they
leave easily

I am burning, do not speak
let me sear these wounds
as I please

kalopsia

they call it kalopsia:
'the delusion of things being more beautiful than they really are'.

and so I have a word for it:
like a surprise gift that suddenly fell into my lap, discovered while browsing the internet – unguarded from words that could attack by simply existing; free gifts, free wounds, with no giver, no inflicter; no one to blame but self for aimless surfing, careless exposing of heart where there are knife words and caress words and too many others in between. (does it apply to people too? no delusion, this – this way that I see you.)

and so it has a name, then:
such a beautiful, collapsing-in-on-itself, drawn-out, soft word for this effect you have on me with the effect you have on things – you touch something or gaze at it, with that look in those eyes, and suddenly there is one more thing for me to see anew, to treasure, to hold to the heart tenderly.

kalopsia, how apt:
it sounds so much like what I want to do every time my eyes find you.