Do You Remember Touching
Touching is something that people take for granted
A thing of youth
Age deprives
you learn to live without touch
Do you remember what it was like to touch silk and skin
Do you remember what it was like to kiss
Gentle soft skin against gentle soft skin
It's a guilty remembrance
as if I am perpetrating some kind of crime
How dare I
How dare I
remember you when you may not want to be remembered
Silk is the word that always comes to mind
Like running my hands over water
Oh God I did love water
Swimming is one of those things I don't do
any more
To be wet when you're young it's so beautiful
Your features are purified and exaggerated
and extraordinary and beautiful and clean
You are never more beautiful in youth
than when you are wet or cold and flushed pink
To be wet when you're old
it's just
to be seen in all of your imperfections
ashen and dry even when wet
Age doesn't like to swim
And age is not improved by cold
But I remember when I used to swim
like a dolphin dipped and dives
and stopping to catch breath
I would float my hands on the water
rest them on the velvet surface
caress it and feel its definition
it's otherworldly texture
It's atomic form
Silken and otherworldly and impossible
just as you felt to touch
How could anything feel so completely soft and pure
and right
Our world is losing its water just as I am losing my water
My beautiful world is drying
I'm dry
I dream water and remember the books that you wanted me to read Dune
In which water was so precious that even tears were saved only for those you love the most
Copyright © Ingrid Showalter Swift | Year Posted 2022
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