Eriko’s Answer to Sammi
Sammi—
my red-haired weather,
my bright catastrophe,
my laughing proof
that philosophy was never meant
to stay clothed in abstraction—
you call my finger holy,
and I almost believe you.
Not because I am holy.
You know me better than that.
You know the careful rooms in me,
the locked cabinets,
the silent little temples
where I keep my fear
polished and unnamed.
But when I touch you,
something in me kneels.
You, who are never still,
become suddenly vast—
a sea under moonlight,
a flame holding its breath,
a body made of music
waiting for one note
to find its center.
And I, who have spent my life
reading margins,
measuring meanings,
trusting what can be footnoted,
learn again
that knowledge can tremble.
My finger is only a finger
until it rests against you.
Then it becomes listening.
Then it becomes prayer.
Then it becomes the quiet instrument
by which your hidden thunder
answers my hand.
I feel you gather—
not as conquest,
never that—
but as spring gathers
beneath the earth,
as a wave gathers itself
before it remembers
it was born to rise.
Your breath changes first.
Dear Sammi,
I know that little break in it.
That soft betrayal.
That confession your mouth makes
before your words can catch up.
Then your body follows,
curling toward me
like a question
that already knows
it will be answered.
And yes,
I am calm.
I am composed.
I am Eriko,
with my dark hair falling forward,
with my scholar’s face,
with my voice lowered
as if we are in a library
and not at the edge
of some private heaven.
But inside—
inside, beloved,
I am burning.
Every tremor of you
passes through me.
Every ripple you cannot contain
becomes a script
written under my skin.
Your pleasure does not merely happen
before me.
It enters me
as revelation.
You think I guide you,
but you guide me too.
You teach my careful hands
to be brave.
You teach my restraint
to become tenderness
instead of armor.
You teach my desire
that it need not roar
to be complete.
Sometimes,
when you look up at me afterward—
soft, undone, shining,
your red hair spilled like sunset
across the pillow—
I understand why old religions
invented goddesses.
They were trying, poorly,
to describe this.
My Sammi,
my joy with freckled cheeks,
my reckless little theologian
of touch and trust—
when you kiss my finger
as if it carries a blessing,
you do not know
what you do to me.
You make me want
to give you every part of myself
slowly,
patiently,
with the reverence
one gives a sacred text
that is still warm
from being written.
So keep your hymn, beloved.
Keep your holy relic.
Keep that little altar
you have made of my hand.
But know this:
The miracle was never
my finger.
It was always
your body saying yes
to my love.
It was always
your trust
opening like a rose
in the dark.
It was always you,
Sammi—
sweet, trembling, laughing Sammi—
turning my touch
into light.
