Your Thinny Arms

The way your arms are skinny makes me nervous

And afraid…

I hate the word skinny, it sounds so vulgar and itchy

Skinny!

Your skinny arms make me feel cold

And I wonder how the winter air must affect your skinny arms

Maybe I should say thin,

Your thin arms make me afraid of myself.

I hate the word thin too,

Both words make me want to cry…

Fuck!

Your thin, skinny arms make me want to hurt myself

Make me want to break something…

I feel like you’re so breakable

Damn.

Your thinny arms make me jealous, just a little bit

Well, maybe more than that –

My arms look at your thinny ones, give me the finger and mutter a silent “fuck you.”

I want to touch your thinny arms and watch them respond,

For some reason I feel arms like yours must themselves be sentient beings

Your skith arms must have a mind of their own.

They must be wise and benevolent like Gandhi,

He had skith arms,

Your arms like his, grown from the same curry powder and Hinduislamibuddhist rain,

Never tainted or enriched by Saharan dust or the black song of the Bantu

Like my arms,

Makes me long for singularity and oneness,

Not the thick confusion of mixed.

Your thin arms wrapped around her thin arms,

Wrapped around smiles,

Wrapped around memories

Wrapped around yourself in the dark

Sorry…

Here I don’t envy your thin arms because thin arms can never hold you the way

Thick ones can

Even if the only ones holding you are your own.

Your thin arms are beautiful,

And fragile and thin,

Surreptitiously they snake their way up your sleeves and join the rest of you

Thin,

And breakable…

I want there to be more of you so that when I hug you

I am not afraid that you’ll snap into

Fragments.

Your skinny arms make me nostalgic

And ponderous and timid and awkward,

Next to your arms, my arms are leviathans

Redwoods beside olive branches,

Deep sea pipelines beside dainty straws,

Beside your thin arms mine sometimes don’t know how to be,

But if they could say anything,

It would be take a load off

Your thin arms must be weary…

Give me your troubles,

My thick arms will carry them a while.