Touch

​

I dreamt of horses galloping through February twilight, puffs of unbridled breath atop their nostrils. Steam rose from their angular bodies like an aura, visible in the dim moonlight.

​​​

Touch - a primal knowledge, to know, and be known.

​​

Bodies, skin, nerves and neurons activated, a strand of sensation running from me to you.

​​

I removed my scarf. showing my face, before walking towards the horses' enclosure. I, then, reached out to the mare, to touch her nose but when I leaned across the fence, hand outstretched -

​

I was blasted away.

​

The fence was electrified, my mouth filled with the taste of lightning; bitter and metallic, my body humming, aching and empty.

​

I was changed. 

 

Disoriented, dazed, denied - but closer to God, as for a moment, I’d forgotten myself.

 

2.

 

I woke to dust, like microscopic glitter, swirling in your morning window.

 

The sun rose, pushing upward to ascendancy, where from its apex, it burned away at yesterday’s snow but for the patches of white that remained, protected by the shadows cast by your skeletal trees.

 

The naked trees, their limbs gnarled and arthritic-looking,

 

stretched,

 

reaching,

 

scraping across the electric-blue dome of the cloudless sky.

 

Even so, you didn’t mind when I stepped out to smoke.

 

Throughout the day I left a pyramid of cigarette butts on the edge of your porch, as if to claim a patch of territory, to leave something of myself behind.

 

3.

 

And so I asked you, as daylight was swallowed by the horizon, shall we go to bed?

 

You fell asleep quickly, before I did, and as your breath became regular and contented, I wondered what visions were being projected against the backs of your eyelids?

 

I remember wishing then, that I could take you to see the horses galloping but, then, with my arm across you, I too succumbed to dream.

​