Parallel Play

 

I.

You once said that tearing off clothes is like peeling

an orange, and that making out reminds you

of when you discovered a purple crayon

for the first time. You say the world

is not black and white, not made up of two sides,

but instead of something in between blue and green.

Sunday school taught you something

about the polarity of colors,

about how red apples aren’t always sin.

If you bite into them, they reveal

a lacy white underneath. An act

of sin doesn’t make you a sinner

you said, but instead it makes you

see the world in color,

in the shades in between.

 

II.

I see where my body ends and yours starts,

your wrists and arms as horizons that blend

into my skin, you are a pale night sky

against my ocean of freckles. I can see

the inverse of skin against palms, the lines

on my fingers forcing a comma into yours.

There’s meaning in between the etches

on your hands, stacked friction

between the sides of your fingers against mine,

pale roots intertwined on cotton sheets.

As you stretch out beside me now,

I understand what you mean

when you say “I need to live

in a state of parallel play.”