The Touch That Burns

I want to touch you
not by accident, not in passing,
but with intention,
with a trembling kind of knowing.
I want to place my fingers
where your breath gathers,
where silence pools
just beneath your skin.

But I don't.
Because if I do,
something sacred will catch fire.
Something fragile
will become ashes in our hands.

You are off limits
the universe whispered it,
the world agreed.
And still,
my body aches with rebellion.

I know the rules.
So do you.
We both live inside their lines,
even as our eyes dare to wander beyond them.

And yet
your skin calls to mine
like a memory I’ve never lived.
A brush of fingers,
a ghost of a kiss,
a soft collision of soul against soul.

We pretend not to notice.
We play it safe.
We keep our distance
even as our hearts write sonnets
in the space between us.

But we suffer
not from what has been,
but from what never will be.
Not from the fire itself,
but from the forever-burning
longing
to feel it
just once.

Simona 🦋