it's not you. it's that i stopped knowing what i want. it is fall creeping into me and i am restless trying all at once to say
i love you i hate this i need to go. she did not come to me assembled. i've never been good with directions. her small self has crept into my brain, invaded so thoroughly that i am left many nights hoping i will somehow transform into the person that had time to love
someone like that. i am left hoping i will revert and forget mending the torn bits of myself.
later in the day when the sun had gone i held my head, cradled on my knees and thought - almost fondly - that i will never know if there were a lesser travelled path. how high and how straight to hold my head so that i never catch glimpses of them, never feel the knot tight in my throat. will they spend a life time
stealing my breath like this? however bloated with water i've never been able to drown the butterflies in my stomach when there is a new connection. it is an excuse, though, and you will accept it. it makes all the difference (it
makes it go away, for you).
it is in the lack of feeling, mostly, how i know it won't matter what i say after this because i've lost it.
i can't help you. next.
living in the past like this i rarely bother to think of
tomorrow, the days and months following. there is only so much room inside of a head. perhaps the lumps in my throat and the stomach knots are all of the people i have lost sliding into different spaces in my body so that i might move on some day. eventually there may be enough room left in there for some next week
down the road.
a quiet whisper tells me the lucky ones remember how to feel when the head empties out a little.
curiously, i seem to know when it is you causing the
pain in my side. the others, a blur. i let her inside of me, like crashing waves and thunder. my life is a faded painting hanging in a dishevelled
seaside shanty, i am the tiny boat, torn and tattered sails.
lifting my head from my knees, a deep breath. i am simply thankful.
there is nothing like the calm.