tomcairnspoetry

Skin and memory

July 2022

As we walked and talked, you stroked my hand with your thumb.

Round and round, the lightest touch.

You told me it was so you would remember my skin

And my heart ached.

 

Now as I walk I sometimes find that for a mile or more

My own fingertips have been circling my thumb.

It is one of a hundred ways you inhabit me in absence:

My skin remembers you.

 

Round and round, the lightest touch.

So satin-soft that it calls out a feeling like heartbreak,

So pebble-smooth that I cannot believe I have fingerprints,

As though you polished me before you left.