for Nasia
You are making me now,
Right now, the clay of me
Warm in your hands,
The hands of me warmed
By your hands that shape them, shape a heart
That’s never beaten, been beaten,
Skin that shivers in secret places,
Places that will never be touched
Except by the maker
Hunched patiently over
The stupidity of matter,
Leaving your mark between my eyes, my hips,
In the clay turning slowly in your hands,
Blinking a little in your light
As I learn to forget
The tenderness you reveal
In the act of making, to confuse
The feeling of your fingers
Moving inside me
With smaller, less luminous fingers
That will never reach as deep, whose love
Will never make me
Something that can think, can suffer,
As your love, finger by finger,
Is making me now.
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Tikkun 2017 Volume 32, Number 4:55