After Years Without Speaking - poem by Alexandra Barylski

We move not by faith
but by touch. Your soul rises
to skin, shines in its heated oil.
You press your mystery back
with palms over each brow –
fingernail moon, clover, iron
smell of forsaken earth soused
with water, almost baptismal.
Give your hands. I will tend gently
each whorl of your fingertips inked
with being and roll them one by one
to mark the pout of my lips.