Squeezing Love

Breathing in you.
Breathing out you.
My lungs alone,
Love you.
Been in this prickly isolation.
Oh how long can we suffer?
Before the mind is bleak in blunders.
And west of home, you know you touched my indian summer.
So why can’t we quit this defeat?
At 22, I wish I had you honey.
For my heart was wounded
in deathly tension.
And my existence seemed like a fixed fate of continued loss and self-mutilation.
But don’t you know,
even then I heard you coming;
from a roof that could have
crushed every bone.
But now here we stand.
Merging our isolation.
Mouth to mouth.
Folded like an origami rose.
Kneaded,
our hearts found their way.
You.
Breathless and tall.

poem and art: Naomi Ruth W.S.