Made For Each Other

We are Made For Each Other


I wish that your hands
had never touched my hair.


That I had only seen your name,
never held the face.


I wish that each of your glances
had not opened a hunger in me.


That the time I let my fingers pass
down the cool sides of your neck,
across the warm house of your heart,


that you would have shunned me;
that I would have run.

I wish that our hands
had never entwined—


that I would never have created
languages & symbols

in your moistening palm—

that someone would have seen us,


that someone would have come.

I wish that you had never
uttered my name aloud, or
written it down, or whispered it
alone in the night.


That I would never have
held your gaze
across the room, so many times—


that I would have hesitated to come,


that I would have hurried to go.

I wish that my lust for you
would turn to ashes—


that my want for the knowledge of you,
for the sound of you crying out
would disappear like smoke,

and that the thought of you inside me
—or anywhere in the world—
did not frighten,


and that the risk
of toppling the lives we live did not
strobe like a beacon amidst these churning, relentless seas

but...but...We Are Made For Each Other.


(Em Claire)