Fear lies in the demarcation
between this desire and action:

a hand trailed, fingers dancing lightly,
down the length of her spine,

unrealized except in the metaphor
of this pen’s nib across the page,

the sensuous play of the word
as it unfolds the world we become.

Yet to crawl out of my skin,
to escape the constellations

of my collective guilts,
would be to woo myself away

from all that I am and cross
into only that which I deplore.