felipe

"At lunch, I think about your hands, and that’s it. That’s my spine unloosening for the day. That’s all the ocean in my belly heading straight to the shore of my throat. I think about your hands and suddenly, I don’t know what to do with mine. Suddenly my fingers are not my fingers but the empty space between them where yours should be. I am all missing, I lose myself for the day and leave to find you. I misplace my throat because it is clasped in the cup of your hand. I leave my bitten lips on your bedside table. My thighs have the ghosts of bruises unfurling into poppies, like bloodstains on snow. I break things because I am shaking and I am shaking because you are not with me and you are not with me because we are just learning to touch each other through the spaces between us. It is violent that we cannot touch each other, yet. It’s a war crime. It should be illegal that my fingers still haven’t learned the notches of your back. I think about holding your wrist in the O of my thumb and my index finger. I think about kissing the blue veins there. I think about careful mouth touches, and the tender of you. The warm, soft hollow of you, and how I lose my bottom lip wondering about yours. I’ll kiss you there, I promise. I promise.”
—Azra Tabassum, "These wrists, these eyes, these praying hands."

"hoje meu professor me contou
que toda célula do nosso corpo inteiro
é destruída e trocada por outra
a cada sete anos
como é reconfortante saber
que um dia terei um corpo
que você nunca tocou."