Skin

I'm sure you know those kinds of days
Where you feel like any cut in your skin
Will make all that you are come unraveled,
That your insides will loosen and spill and bones crack and break.
When you're alone it is after all only you skin keeping you together.
All that makes us up is kept in place by the thin of our skin
Because so much of who we are are is skin deep but that is no bad thing.
Maybe thick skin is overrated, callouses unneeded.
A sense of vulnerability could let us feel the world anew.
Callouses block another's hands and mountain streams,
Thick skin numbing us when we ought to hear.
No one talks about the electricity found in skin,
Of raised hair along the curve of the head during embrace,
Skin chilling along the forearm in anticipation of some great symphony.
I appreciate the brick and mortar architecture of the skin of those I love.
Sunlight caught in the arches around the pools of eyes.
Veins below the surface but above the bones in your hands
And your dirty fingerprints hold your journey in their creases.
Bruises are the parchment charting your stories and mistakes.
Think about how skin can be pushed, pulled, creased, and soon cracked.
Be gentle to all, you never know how thin their skin can be.