I wish I saw myself through your eyes.
Through eyes that see beautiful things
in the dark and glimmering mica ghetto sidewalks
and I would love to not want to argue
with an offhanded compliment
and to respond without rolling my eyes
(which are wide and buggy and uneven, by the way.)
Or hiding my face behind my hair
(Did you notice it’s very frizzy today? I did.)
Even though when you draw it, it looks perfectly smooth.
(Although maybe your smooth is stringy.)
And my forehead in cross hatching is suitable
(rather than low and cro-magnon scowling like it is.)
and my nose is only slightly tilted charmingly
(When we both know it is croked, long and horsey.)
And I know that in your eyes
tenement stone mazes are transformed
Into canvasses and living breathing monuments of miracles.
My nagging eyes want to dwell on sanded broken pains
and chipped brick moss wounded crumbling walls
but if I look through your fingers, I see a temple
to a sleeping urban savior
And under your hands, I feel the way you see me.
My mind is still and too occupied with that tingle
deep in my spine when you touch, to disagree.
Under your metal rough and paintstaking touch
I am made smooth, liquid and alive.
And rather than wide and uneven, my eyes are closed.
My stuttering breath rests easy under your lips
And the pit of my stomach is alight
And lifting me up to meet your body with mine
Tousled on the pillow I am neither frayed nor strung out
with you I become something brilliant haloed and divine.
Written for Dom, shortly after we got together. Part of what I love about him is that he sees the best things in me, and sometimes sees me much more accurately than I see myself.