Rosebush
If we could, for a moment,
Forget all the sounds and colors,
All thoughts and desires
And experience then the touch of fingers.
Softness would begin the senses.
Remember what it felt like,
True loves first kiss, or handhold?
Much like hugging a rosebush,
With beautiful smells but don’t move too quick,
It’ll rip you up.
If we could, for a moment,
Talk about the time it happened,
When she pressed your hand to the griddle
And it came off burned and red.
Suppose the softness is an idea,
And one that can’t be grasped or contained,
Intermixed with pain, contingent on it in fact.
Suppose that’s just the way it is,
For some reason.
I’m not sure but whenever there seems
To be a hand to hold,
Mine comes back to me once it’s done
And it’s not the same again.
Where did my hand go?
Was it taken from me?
Who replaced it with this mangy old thing?
Ben North is a young, struggling writer from the unentertaining Midwest of the United States, or otherwise called, a Yank. Currently he is working on his first novel, Pure Nacional which currently feels like an impossible undertaking.