"An Anchor Around Your Free Thoughts"

We walk hand in hand on the forest trail, I can feel your thoughts pulsating through your bony fingers, interlaced between mine, amassing joy at the touch of something pure. There are tortuous moments of silence chiseling our bodies apart as they navigate the uneven ground, toes stepping over rising roots that look like grandmother’s arms, stones erupting, pushing away the layers of lost life making homes for tiny legged potato beetles. Your fingers unravel from mine, your arm twisting taut behind you, shoulder blade cutting through your flesh as you move forward three steps ahead, my shyness an anchor around your free thoughts, and as your hand breaks from mine I am showered with the vision of skin stranding into silk ribbons hung on the hooks of your desire. You find a sharp stick, hold it to your eyes for inspection, lips moving silently, your mind circumnavigating a world I cannot see. You begin writing our poem into the moist earth, with its’ hidden fears, its’ death, its’ seed of life, its’ fragility, with sweeping arcs and dominating angles, standing at first and then falling close to the words you cannot take with you. Aleathia Drehmer 2007