A sensuous experience like nothing else:

To touch, to be touched, to feel touched inside,

Touching someone else

Touching yourself.

You rub my foot in the midnight hour. My heel coarse and dry.

My long, thin nails scratch your back. The sunlight rises in the east.

1,2,3,4 - I declare a thumb war.

Bouncing my hip to your's - cha cha cha.

A handheld, a kiss on the cheek,

A contract signed with a shake.

A seamstress hemming my dress.

A buck forty-two exchanged with the clerk.

The ripples of the bottle cap scraping against my hand.

The liquid gold of sparkling water fizzled on my lips.

My tongue, throat, and skin, grateful.

The expectation of touch isn't universal.

I learned this lesson the hard way in Tokyo when I hugged someone's fiancé.

There is meaning in a hand reached out in a moment of need.

There is meaning in a shoulder turned away cold.

We're constantly swinging on a pendulum of touching abundance or touching scarcity.

I'm reminded of Ear Hustle:

Solitary confinement,

No touch, no light.

A friend comes by to say hi.

He pokes his pinky through the honeycomb door.

That finger to finger touch, it has to last all week.

It's a punishment to be denied touch. It's a test to the soul.

Sometimes abstaining from touch is empowering.

Sometimes indulging in touch seems sinister.

Like smell, touch can be felt from a memory; like it's happening again for the first time.

Sung in Astrud Gilberto's smooth, paradise-like track: "I just make believe I'm touching you. I never will be free from this illusive dream until you come to me, so I close my eyes and pretend that you're holding me tight."

Touching me, touching you.

Touch: it's just so sensitive.