From Stone, to Salt, to Sea.

I used to catch you in my hands

cup my palms

and roll you between fingers
slowly till you were

swollen with the warmth of me.

But now my hands wander

an empty wilderness of

streams and deep earth,

they journey unfamiliar territory
of breathing forests and savage desire.

so now they linger in the failing

light eventually escaping into

the darkening sky.

Once when my hands

Spoke your name gently

with knowing, stumbling 

fingers unbuttoned you,

pulled the shawl from your fragile shoulders.

Peeling away the layer

of air to find stone, then

salt, finally sea, till my hands

in hunger tasted

you, and filled their aching mouth

with your brine.

my hands traveled

the distance of you and in

their solitude fuse with the swell of your

breasts, drinking their

firm warmth and rolling the

stiffness of your passion

between questioning fingers,

Until we turned to stone

and plummet through the

still air,

and we roll together and

find the stillness

that inhabits stone.

And for a millennium

in the calm of time

we slumber entangled

fused by heat and silence

so in eternity we move from
stone to salt,

and the tang sears

the wounds of my hands

and falls into the bruise of my

mouth,

the sting of you shocks me.

You surge washing the brine from my mouth

then grow from salt to water,

and fill my eyes and hands

with your motion.

And again I become hands,

and cup you in the twilight

of my passing,

and in the futility of flesh

in the inevitable passing of  hands

you travel through my fingers,

and as you fill me with your absence

I turn from hands , to stone, to salt, to sea,

till loss drinks  the dimming day

and in the end sea and salt

devours  all.