Touch

Everything here is yellow and green.
—Anne Sexton

You pull me into your
delicate sea,
As I shiver at your touch,
Now I’m a valley and you’re
a mountain,
Now I’m dark green and you’re
bright yellow,
You play me like an instrument,
pulling my strings
one by one,
As I respond in a symphony
of poetic madness,
Crying on my pillow, I hug
the empty space
between us,
Longing for the night when
I first touched you.

Love, darling, is a silent mistress,
who comes streaming through
my fingers in gentle tears.
We have lost the softness
and the tenderness of her touch,
Sleeping on a bed of nails,
we scream in agony of her
passing.

But I know that deep inside you
there is a flower growing,
longing for the moisture
of a kiss, for the freedom
of the ocean.
We meet and part in its darkness,
leaving a trail of tears behind us.


   May 31, 1987
--Alexander Shaumyan