Skin

Your skin might be warmer than a sun that heats the entirety of the world, a galaxy, a thousand civilizations that have thrived under it but I don’t think they’ve ever been as alive as I’ve felt for the half-second my hand brushes yours.  Light expands across a universe so terribly enormous that the prickle of sweat gathering at the nape of my neck is less than an infinitesimal speck but when your hands slide across the cool expanse of my skin there’s nothing more significant than this reaction. It will change the fate of the world. But you are the sun and I am the world, you said at 5 am when I didn’t want to wake up and you were brilliant with insomnia.  Treetops and a glittering sea, dots of animals and laughter and shopping malls, math homework and stale bread and ten zillion 5 ams where your skin is there to awaken me. I don’t, you whisper in a voice hidden by the knots in my hair, want to freeze. Gentle rustlings that trace imprints into skin. Warm lips. Slow smile. I’m alive for eons.