(touch)starved

If you go long enough without a meal, would you even remember you were starving? If the hollowness lasted for days, weeks, yearswould you not grow used to its company?

Because I think I might’vewith a different kind of hunger. One I didn’t know was there aching in my chest until I felt your hand in mine.

I am skin starved. Insatiable after a single bite, that I would not have my fill of touch if even a feast of it was offered before me.

Affection is not my first language, but I’m doing my best to learn; to read the pangs in my chest the same way I do my stomach. To accept this gentleness and warmthto give it back.

Sometimes, it feels like peeling back my skin, like baring my neck and exposing the soft slope of my vulnerable stomach. But you have only ever lain upon them gentle fingers and it has gotten easier to swallow my damnable pride.

| Jess Weiss