Returning to Sensual: A Prayer, Far Too Many Months After Car Crash

Nicole Justine Reid

(READING TIP: If reading on your phone, tilt your phone horizontally to experience the intended formatting and line breaks)

Please, pull this pain from my breasts,
nipples now too tender to touch
from so much play so needed

Loosen tightness where my spine
meets my hips, I want to worship with rhythm,
dance an altar between us

Make my mouth open gently,
have my heart follow suit
the way it lights up when you’re in one,

All smart, mystery leaking,
naked skin hidden
just beneath those fine threads

I want to return to my body’s waves
where the muscle meets the horizon
and the cold is far far below where I cannot touch it

I want to play in our sheets, waking
to want us, shyness thrust off like covers
exposing salt, heat, and sweat

I want to kiss you like I mean it, mouth hungry
for more, circles circling each other, connecting
like rings, fingers clasping like mouths

I want to lay in the stillness, my spine
curved to your muscle, your arms
firmly around me

So when you touch me, it no longer hurts

I have been drowning without waves—our cold
blinding me from being, but I can see the horizon
here now, we’re in it

Soft and melting, like a sunset over ocean
bright enough for our souls to light again,
the fire lit and skimming past skin

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My poem “Returning to Sensual: A Prayer, Far Too Many Months After Car Crash” was first published in the Poetry Summer 2020 issue of Sixfold.

Listen to me read the poem on SoundCloud

Also accessed through the links above are the following four poems of mine which were also published in the Poetry Summer 2020 issue of Sixfold and which I read in my SoundCloud Poetry Reading:

“My Little Orange Tomato”
“Before Georgia”
“Outlines”
“Sweet Salt”