Your Arms

by Sis Cat

Funny, what I most miss about you are your arms.
Like phantom limbs, memories remain of your arms.

Lying in bed together after making love,
my body tingled in the embrace of your arms.

When we spooned together, you in back, me in front,
my finger worried cicatrices on your arms.

I asked how you got the old cuts, scars, and burn marks,
and you told stories of each blemish on your arms.

Our entwined fingers formed a human centipede;
limbs squinched in the anaconda coils of your arms.

Spooning, I imagined our bodies merged to one—
centaur-like—with four legs but only your arms.

Once, I dreamed I shrank to the size of an ant scout
that explored the alien surface of your arms.

Other times, my body pulsed within your heartbeat,
as if wrapped in the blood pressure cuffs of your arms.

Sometimes, I gazed upon the fine hairs on your skin,
and watched them undulate with each breath on your arms.

And if an entangling limb should stray past my lips,
I kissed your skin and tasted the sweat on your arms.

Had I known that would be our last night together,
I would have pressed myself tighter into your arms,

And held my breath while feeling your breath on my neck,
as if that night would last forever in your arms.

Strange how your absence tightens its grip around me
to where I can’t breathe without yearning for your arms.

I wonder what you were thinking on our last night
and who tonight dreams in the embrace of your arms.

I recall you inscribed my name twice on your skin;
did you remove the “Andre” tattoos from your arms?

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Recognized

Cicatrices=the scars of healed wounds.

Spooning=when a couple lie down front to back, fitting together like spoons.

Ghazal=a form of poetry about unrequited love written, spoken, and sung from Turkey and Persia to Pakistan and India.

Poets write ghazals in no less than five and no more than fifteen couplets.

They introduce the theme in the first couplet with an end rhyme (radif) on both lines that is repeated without change on the second line of the following couplets.

A changing rhyme (qaafiyaa) may precede the end rhyme. I'll try that on my next ghazal.

The poet includes his or her pen name (takhallus) in the final couplet.

I thank Indian-born and raised FanStorian Ameen786 for recommending that I read popular Persian/Urdu poets like Mirza Ghailb and Faiz Ahmed Faiz whose ghazals inspired mine.

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a ghazal

Your Arms

by Sis Cat

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