Braille

A tiny scar that marks a long-ago mishap or misdemeanor. A slender ridge left by an ancient scalpel. Faint dots and lines, barely more tactile than a tattoo, in the shadow of a breast, the lee of a thigh, the curve of a hip, that startle my hands because they are like invisible jags in silk, minute blemishes embossed on flawless skin. Cocooned in love’s sleepy afterglow in my bed, your body is warm like hushed earth that remembers a newly departed sun. My hands sleepwalk across this mythical landscape, stumbling eyeless across a scattered alphabet in which I’m not literate, the coded script to a life that has now joined mine. There will be plenty of time to learn. For now, my fingers are content to gather up their stories, undeciphered, into my dreams.