Locks Without Keys

This constant and unending
yearn for touch
Pleading of skin softly textured
against skin
Murmured words, warmth of bodies
stretched
The intimacy of waking
to tousled hair
cast across a pillow
caressed in sleep

These things consume
the waking hours
Interventions in the day
Locks without keys
Self exile, yet yearning
for a tearing down
A deconstruction
magnificently conceived
Practiced inelegantly
just behind the eyes

Out of reach and bound away
from knowing
the blind constraint
the fear of nakedness
Not the common stripping off
of clothes
but the unlayering
of protected tenderness
shyly unrevealed
Spoken only in the mind

Blood red thoughts, peeled back
and salted down
Preserved for now against the decay
of rejection
or acceptance
or something in between
A tightwire neverland
too unsteady to walk
No net, the first step never taken
turning back

Imprisoning ourselves
within the walls of solitude
Shuffling feet in timeworn pathways
of avoidance
Eyes cast down, sharp edges of life
worn smooth
Waiting for some unknown jailor
jangling keys
to come and slide back bolts
untumble tumblers