How to Touch Her
Tessa Calogaras (Massey University, New Zealand)
My mind is a stuffed disease.
Through clouded eyes,
my face feels faint and shallow.
Quiet hands and drooling lids –
slobber.
Broken confidence
through months of solitude,
hidden feelings that showed their presence
between self-doubt.
The way she smiles
or the way she looks at you,
how every girl wants a boy to look at her,
I know she wants
me
to stretch hands –
titillating.
I swallow
nerves and puke.
Disgorged in my throat,
she sat.
Smiling up at me,
her face so hopeful,
her hands stretched
like mine once stretched to him.
Away she walks beyond my mind,
Her frolicking feet halted against the reflection of my sanity,
nuzzled in.
I want to keep her.
Hold her against my chest
and make sand box promises.
In single beds
with Christian hands,
looking for God
in paper notebooks.
To extend that grip,
yet I don’t know
how to touch her.
Tessa Calogaras is a 23 year old poet, working as a studio manager at a Wellington creative digital agency called *Experience. She first got into poetry as a way of therapy and loved how the use of metaphors and similes made these feelings feel more like cryptic messages and could be up for interpretation. Her dream would be to one day have her own poetry books; however, for now the most exciting thing for her is when people find her work and are touched by it.
