Innocence – Day Four of NaPoWriMo

 

I’ve made home in my bathtub

where water traces its way down my back,

rivulets breaking where bones peek out through skin.

My eyes shut, I can remember fingers

slim and calloused, nails cut jagged in a hurry,

were here before the water

tracing letters in a language that died as the hands left me,

that meant nothing more than names scribbled absent-mindedly on wet sand at the beach.

Innocence isn’t

never having known the touch

of hands that were capable of writing verses of endless longing.

Innocence is

not knowing that those verses meant no more than

wrinkles in a bed sheet, smoothed out as soon as your feet find the ground in the morning,

crinkles in a page, unfolded before you return a book to the library

flyaway strands of hair,

pleading to be tucked away by hands

that meant to say nothing at all.

 

Written by Mihika Antonia Dean

Artwork: Sin of Innocence by Elaine Qiu.

 

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