If I could touch your skin
Most of the time I conceal I'm pretentious. Most of the time, people can't tell and I live discreetly, safeguarding each movie, book and song I enjoy. But then you show up. You are brazen, unashamed, flamboyant, in a hazy mixture of conscious decisions and your own brain's betrayals. Everybody says it to your face, but you continue enjoying whatever you feel like. So you've gone out, studied and practiced almost everything without caring about the rest of the world.
For a moment, if we talk, I feel like I'm setting the walls down, indulging in what I decided was strictly forbidden. Maybe that is why it feels intoxicating, and why it leaves me spinning afterwards. The night comes and I'm still savoring every sentence we told each other. My brain betrays me too, so we're always jumping from one thing to the next, in a flurry that would be normally exhausting. But here I am, still recollecting vividly almost the whole thing, hours after you left me again.
How I would love to tell you how much it melts me the kind of discreet openness you have. You stop being extravagant when you talk about the people you've loved and touched. You suddenly become serious and thoughtful, like you're slowly selecting the correct words to honor what you once were. Like you want to preserve the intimacy you once had, almost speaking of them in short poems.
If I could touch your skin, I wonder what it would feel like. Would I like it? Or would I feel repulsed by it? I keep hoping that whatever the case, I would be able to speak of us kindly, just like you do with the people from your past. I just can't tell where my interest truly ends.
You can tell me how much of a coward I am all you want. We both know you're right. While you were out there trying to find meaning in your life from other people, I was hiding, fearful of getting hurt, stuck between all my own prejudices.
That's how it's always been with me, trying to run away from myself.