Worthy

Your hand in my hair

Does not feel the way

The hands of other men have felt

Absent from your touch

Is the building aggression

The palpable vibration of subjugation

Which I had known before

And which had mingled

Stickily

With shame

To coat my heart and confirm

Love holds pain

Your hand instead conveys

Tender curiosity

Even reverence

You are careful

Full of care

And a portal opens within me

Offering a deep drink

Of sudden healing

A crystalline view

Of this moment suspended

Bliss for which

The price has already been paid

It cost me my past

My old way of knowing myself

It cost an endless series of questions

A rewriting of what I once believed

And here I am in the evidence

That I have changed

The work has worked

And I have moved

At last

Right here

I am free

The fear that often creeps upon me

As if I’ll turn another corner

And find myself

Inescapably in the past again

Does not exist here and now

Your touch is proof

I never have to go back

I can stay with me

Just stay, and see, and breathe

And believe

This is what love feels like

Tender curiosity