Words by Joe

Your skin is a transmission;
a message speaking of days spent
at the easel and loves
that touched you. A small
silhouette sits on the cover
of your bookish back. I
can read your name in the notches
of your spine and the signs spoken
by the movements
of your impure hair.

In my mind I see you turn towards
me, stepping gently in kinetic verses
punctuated by the grammar of your flesh
and your verbose hands. I
think of you as a story some have
read but none
understood; only I know the tale
told by your body when it was first formed
in the womb. That first fold was
the closing of a book.

Your skin is a message
emanating from your hips;
a broadcast in code your lungs
sent me and which the fine hairs
carry still down the small of your back. I
pore over the cleft of your
breasts, my fingers finding Braille in
your freckles. The medium enfolds
me like a story I’ve only begun to
understand but have read many times.

Literary legs draw me fast into this best
and last fiction.