I keep the ink stains on my fingers, 
temporarily tattooed grooved loops 
examined when my pen no longer 
scrawls along the pages.

I've written for hours on end, 
seeing if I've missed syllables, 
if the passages capture your surface 
or the infinite beauties breathing beneath.

I've come to think of them as artifacts, 
untouched treasures just waiting
to be unearthed by patient hands,
studied with knowing fingertips.

But the words I use at times may be walls, 
carefully woven metaphors framed around you, 
a pen's tip spiraling for years to try and say 
all the things I want you to know. 

The ink stains I won't wash away tonight 
stay on my skin as remnants that may 
lightly touch your face in the candlelight, 
you'll be able to read more about me 
in that one small moment than you will 
in the lines of novellas and sonnets.

You tell me we can just learn together, 
that the pages will be something that you 
will hold on to like living mementos, 
that our surface only exists 
as a canvas to paint and write along.

We'll let our colors spill together 
however they're meant to.

We'll unearth one another 
in each touch for hours on end,
capturing the infinite beauties
swimming and joining together 
beneath the surface.

It's knowing fingertips that crack
the walls that words can build, 
crack the still earth below shaking legs, 
and frame us with the warmth 
my words have tried to translate.

The ink stains will weather and wash away 
as all remnants are eventually meant to, 
the pages we make are in this soft candlelight, 
I'll be able to read you in the small moments 
that we barely have a language for.