Open Palms

I place open palms against yours  

and watch them slide right past those  intricate veins, 

which carry no blood; 

but we played "marriage" games with them anyway  

because they formed beautiful "M"s in our hands. 

There is a space between our palms, 

a glass one inch thick,  

I see you through it;  

a darkened 'sphere that separates us: 

our pride, our hearts. 

We speak yet can't be heard-  

the sound proof wall echoes-  

we consume only our own words. 

Selfishness abides where love once bloomed  

in shabby garden shacks where  

our dimly lit bodies danced  under waves of moonlight 

deepening into midnight-

and you kissed me on my forehead,  

when you were through christening the virgin womb of my mind  

and claiming the innocence of my senses, 

weaving through the unopened doors:

unuttered passages of Religion unpracticed  

and misunderstood memory verses.

I remember them,  

while staring into your eyes  

through the steel like reinforced entrapment of my mind.

I resist the urge to claw for you,  

hopeless, 

strangled with fear, 

ready to spill the Pacific of my tears  

into your endless Mediterranean pool.  

You are only too willing to accept it,  

just as how you willingly accepted the remnants of me. 

I break contact and turn my head 

because I realize that as long as my eyes are wide open  

but my mouth and mind remain shut the glass can never split, or crack;

it will simply remain a  stretch of unconquerable wall,  

so thin you hear my not-yet-uttered calls  

yet so thick you couldn't break it  even if you tried.

And try you did 

repeatedly,  

and I vowed to let you cross the canyon deep,  

the reflection that haunted me  like an invisible enemy 

who would forever elude us. 

Silenced fears and hushed tears leave stains of an "almost love" 

battle bruises on my throat from fighting to scream to you 

answers to your simplest questions which could never leave my lips-   

I couldn't recite them like Sabbath hymns- 

they sounded more like a symphony of untuned organs  

whose swelling bellows ache under the heavy air of a frozen winter.

If I could but imagine the courage to let your hear what even I can't-

these lagging footprints of my untraceable thoughts-

I would let them speak every answer your questions beg;

if only they could leap beyond the capsule of my mind  

and into the shelter of your arms.