We fall asleep with our foreheads pressed
together, the way our palms
should be. Maybe this is how
we’re so much the same, how our thoughts twine
and twist, loop together like the shoelaces
I fumbled with when I was six years old.

Each time our tongues are wrapped
I wonder why
my words don’t become yours,
why the letters I save beneath
the buds haven’t slipped
into your mouth too. So I swallow

and they stick in my throat, wedge
themselves between my lungs
and ribs. Maybe if I slept
with my chest smushed against yours
the words would tattoo themselves into you
from where they rest in me,
seven layers of skin deep.

Rochelle Germond is currently pursuing her MFA in Poetry at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Her work has appeared in The Battered Suitcase, Third Wednesday, Emerge, and Torrid. Originally from Florida, she most misses palm trees and lizards, though she is enjoying the fireflies and seasons of her new home.