‘Skin to Skin’

Aicha Benali is a rising mixed-media artist whose work has garnered both national and international recognition. Her piece Lilac Bruise was selected for the cover of the international B’K Magazine and later featured in the Teen Writers Project Magazine. Her work Berry Droplet appeared in the globally circulated KidSpirit Magazine as well as on Teen Ink’s curated platform.

Skin to Skin

Skin to skin
Transmissions of your pulse
Pressing on my neck
Brushing past my cheek
Your fingers eliciting
Subatomic fireworks
From both my hearts

Beaming, throbbing light
Cascading from your lips
Finding its home within my being
The whispers of your touch
Needn’t linger
You’ve already embossed your name
Onto my soul

Lucky for me, she regrows
The bodily phoenix
Dying every so often
I am shamefully transfixed by a boy
Refreshing anew with hope
That skin to skin,
May one day not be my downfall

Still, I wish it could just be you
That gentle pressure on me
Soul-sucking,
Seafoam scenic eyes
Pupils blacker than my worst nights
Every freckle like a flicker
Of a beautiful future

He wields whiplash
Twists and binds me up
Reason is lost in our worldly cavern
The cave that reeks
Of manipulative caresses
Which breaks me, and begins

To build me again

Brick by brick,
Like the dull pains in my chest
When he says a bad thing
Knives in my heart
Made of his cruel words
Piercing to my innermost core
I won’t get a septum
But I’ll stand in the fire for his needles

Pathetic psycho girl
Pining, ridiculous
Poor judgment princess
An intellectual fool
I can build armor from
The inside out, I pray
I can’t take much more pain

I’m still dreaming about the
Depth of warmth coming from your chest
How many hearts do you really have?
That kind gaze, and
The soft flame of your tender kisses
Every witty remark of yours
Eternally satisfies my quest of erudition

I hold your face in my hands
Like I’m six years old
Finding a unique, bewildering rock
That I’d keep in my pocket
Scared to lose
I can’t forget your skin warring mine
Golden, cold
The inflamed utopia

Kiss on me, tongue in me
My body and mind imbued with magic
You, the mage of deception
I know this spell, I know you well

My heartbeat still yearns to feel yours
So I give in, with the hope that once you leave
The last memory I have is of our electric contact
That I’ll taste in the air
Every time I breathe

Sonia Bhojani is an NYU film student who enjoys writing in all its forms. She has written one dramatic short and one feature length satirical horror script, as well as many poems and academic papers. She hopes to become a successful author someday and is currently working on her first novel, an LGBTQ horror romance told from an unreliable, obsessive narrator. She has a poem and a paper getting published in the next year and cannot wait for her first small successes!