Coming to Terms

I've always loved the epistollary genre,

letters fitted with words we might never utter

(for utterance infuses them with nervous life, through breath,

makes real reflections inextricable from the tongue, the lips).

With words I can coyly curl around you

copper kitten-like with holographic eyes,

weave worlds for "us", discursively,

full of languid summer-light day, humming humid night,

fire-flies and murky pond water

aged in the exquisite casks of these two

bodies, graceless and unapologetic

like children.

But speaking this world makes it true-

Makes us kiss in that Sunday rain,

that Sunday movie, that Sunday inclination,

Your imagination rubs against mine

rendering it almost-pregnant with images

of what-was-not-but-might-have-been-or-be,

pale shapes with color-soaked edges, vivid, laden.

These written words

possess a different power from those spoken-

chest rising, falling, lips fellating the enunciation

expelling/coupling words with breath, the thing without which

I am not. These words cannot be divorced

from breath, from body, cannot be made

any less real than me-

So I do not speak.

These words, formed by precise jitters of my left hand,

jiggles, giggles of my wrist across blue lines

begin a dangerous lovely triangle of you, me

and words, those dazzling darlings

I've held so close and for so long,

chicken-scratch signifiers in still-fresh ink.

Words speak volumes, you know,

colors, layers of scent, texture, memory,

snippets of imagination, more vulnerable, revealing

than my naked body in wind or bad lighting.

Dare you meet me on these terms?

You shan't escape unscathed

("shan't," you see? This is not reality...)

My passion, my livelihood, these words

rapier-like at times, dagger-like at times-

and often gentle as peach-fuzzed nose breath

whispered with fairy-like precision

into that crescent crevice behind the ear-

might bind you, slowly, to me, 

without them ever being spoken.

If I say what I mean, and mean

what I say, take care not to fall

for an amorous alphabet of unspoken words.

You see, I only occasionally have the balls

to live them.

And I haven't said a word.