you bleed just to know you’re alive - Eric Turner

the tongues in our mouths are for licking open wounds like the fingers on our lips are for keeping open secrets. this is not a that poem, not yet, shush it with an index. this is a poem of spring. coffee without cream, beginnings without ends to meet, snow melting but not becoming rain. the hands in our hands are for flowers sleeping in their beds which bloom eventually.

ink would be blood if i wrote in it but instead it must be seeping through my clothes if it’s noticeable. i’ve patched it up, let it scar over. i can still see little cuts on you. pinholes through your palm. i can help you patch those up, can’t do it for you. a little spit helps with the scarring. a kiss of the hand and such.

this is a poem of caution. the jacket you grab even when it looks sunny, the shakes that you get when i squeeze your arm. i want to kiss you like dew kisses grass and then like blades kiss goosebumps. i want you in my bed, in the morning. i want to be in yours, in the night. two colognes on the night stand, a box of condoms, a pack of bandaids, cigarettes and other lip balms.

little arrows along an on ramp tell me to take it slow, i get off the gas, on the thigh, on the highway, never touch the brake, we’re supposed to be merging. i know my type but not in blood, never cared about a grade anyway, let’s cut our palms before the next time. i have never sought to be the platonic ideal, i am scarred from romantic flaw, rub along it like a bra line. the windows are down again although they’ve always been seen through, letting pollen in now. spring is a verb for moving forward and also for setting off traps, proceed with little arrows and poems.

this is a poem of quiet, a lean in to speak, legs over each other at a table. soft wind carrying a new beginning, you barely know the cold, no one seems to notice the warmth. maybe it just makes that much sense, maybe it was a mistake. bloodroots are petaling, picking them off and speak three or four words of you (she) and me (me). i counted the petals even months ago, i think i count them odd now. daisies are yellow like arrows on ramps, bloodroot is white like the inside of a bandage. i always look when i take them off.

the wounds taste like change, like metal, like sense that we make. if you count by the dozen you know that the spring comes, but the months seem longer when the sun is gone. i want to breathe in the drops with you, watch them break into heat that we keep ourselves from, leaves that crunch and crackle like skin when you hold a cherry to it, play in the snow when it comes back around. cuts always heal, healers always cut, scalpels and so on. we will be here to kiss and lick and keep it quiet for a moment.