It’s terrible having sticky fingers.

No, not the kind that pull what doesn’t belong to you
off the department store shelves.
I’m no thief.
I don’t steal stuff.
I feel stuff.

Everything I touch has a sense,
a texture, a tone,
a pinch, a puff,
a cuddle, a rebuff.
It’s slippery or slimy,
it’s sticky or prickly.

Or it’s smooth and supple,
nothing that can ruffle.

Maybe it’s new.
Oh when it’s new,
smooth as silk,
silent as sunshine,
dawning on the day at first meeting.

My fingers smile
as they tiptoe across.
Each step
with no hindrance,
into the secret garden, greenery
no one has ever bent before.

None have ever traced this path.
No one has made this journey,
of fingertips along the way.

Pure delight, this newness,
joined by smells afresh.
Breathe in deeply the scent
of pristine, the everlasting
has wandered by and left behind.

“Here comes Sticky Fingers!”
I know they’re saying,
when they see me coming their way.

Touching each one, as I happen by,
Just a simple tap,
a gentle nudge,
a clandestine sweep of the fingertips.
Can’t resist that smoothness,
to know its newness.

A solo treasure that’s all mine.
Not to keep, of course.
That would be stealing.
I’m no thief, you know.
Don’t take what’s not mine.

I leave it for the next sticky fingers.
Who I don’t know.
Won’t know.
Sticky fingers don’t leave prints.

They take touch with them,
gently rubbing, tracing, mixing,
melting, molding,
to the texture meant
to touch another.

Not so terrible, really.