Lately it feels like I’ve been unearthing
Tiny pieces of myself, swallowed and forgotten
Or hidden deep in my skin.
They push at me like shrapnel
Fragmented memories and
the way my name sounds in your throat.
Something long dormant
Eroding carefully crafted callouses
It feels different this time
Somehow sharper around all my worn edges.

I have searched years for something
Whose true nature eludes me

The last night I held you
You were already gone
I felt you slip away
In the space between our words and bodies
Don’t ask me how
I only know it went

What a fleeting, fickle feeling
Hope
And the idea perhaps one day it will return,
choose to stay despite the damage

You held me close, our bodies interlaced. I still remember that first touch, our first kiss, and how it ignited a flame in me I thought I’d lost. The ice came off in sheaths. Each time I frantically reached for my shields, they melted through my fingers. Each word, each touch, each kiss, melted. I was drowning in emotions I had frozen long ago. I could not rebuild the walls I had relied on for so long. I could not refreeze the waters through which I am now apprehensively wading.

When I am with you, these waters do not scare me. I can tell when you leave by your eyes, when you’re still physically beside me, but so far away. My heart hurts each time I see the pain caused by your who else and what others, when I see the pain caused by my presence in your life.

I want only the chance to navigate these new waters with you. I want to study you until I know every last letter. I want to hold you close. I’m not afraid of the complications of traversing these waters with you.

I can’t force you to do this with me, I can only ask, so it is with a heavy heart that I navigate these new waters alone.

Why is it so easy for people to come and go? Why is it easy to entangle oneself so drastically in someone’s life that it’s impossible to ever see out of it? How do you let go when all you want is to hold on for dear life and have them tell you it’s okay, that the sun will come out tomorrow, that everything will be perfect again? It’s so easy to lose yourself in someone and then, one day, when you wake up, you realize that you’re not happy with yourself anymore. You lost all of your self-worth because you’re nothing without someone else. You’re a *******, a liar, a tired and scared little girl without someone there to coax you along and hold your hand. You want so badly to be alone, to be without anything and anyone, but it’s impossible. You can’t live without working, you can’t smile without help, and you can’t live without breathing…except you haven’t exhaled since you started thinking about all of this days ago…weeks ago, even. How is it easy for others to get through heartbreak and break others’ hearts? How is it acceptable in society to have your heart broken? Is it really better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? I would rather have never known what it was like to be wanted, I would rather have never known how love felt. It is the single worst drug out of all of them, but it is the only one that I have ever known to drag everyone down in its wake.

How can you look at me with those eyes and say that things could be perfect when you lied to me only months ago with that very same look on your face? What does it mean when you want to trust someone so badly, but can’t logically make yourself do it? What do you do when he convinces you that he’s right; you should be alone until you figure yourself out, you should stay away from anyone and meaning anything to anyone until you know what you want? Yet when I see your face and those eyes that are trying so hard to understand me, I can’t help but want to stay and make things better. I can’t help but to want to apologize for any time I’ve ever lied or exaggerated to make things better, the times that I questioned your integrity, the feelings of guilt and hate that overcome me so vividly. When your hugs envelope me, I feel safe, because you don’t know what’s in my head and you don’t know how ****** up and confused I really am. I don’t know that I ever want you to know. I don’t know that I ever want anyone else to know anything that crosses my mind ever again.

I want to escape all of it. I want to run away and recreate myself in a place where no one knows me and no one can haunt my past. There are so many places I can go where sidewalks and certain store fronts will mean nothing to me. I could let go and start over. I could change my nickname, I could **** my old image, and I could start over with figuring out who I am. I’ll make lists of the things I like and lists of the things I don’t. I’ll write songs when I’m sad and when I miss you, I’ll remember that you don’t know who I am anymore. I’ll laugh and mean it every time that I say, “I’m happy.” I’ll never let go of my memories, but they won’t haunt me anymore. They won’t cause me to wake up in the middle of the night, drenched with sweat and screaming.

I want you to be someone who wants to know all of my secrets…and someone who won’t judge me for not wanting to share them. I want you to be someone who I can’t really let go of, because you’ll be my lifeline, my other half, the beat to my heart. I want to be able to be honest with you about every small detail of my life, no matter how insignificant or embarrassing it may be. I don’t know that you want to be that person. I don’t know that you could ever want to care enough about me to fill those shoes.

I want to try again. I want to start fresh and new…and I want to feel alive again. I want rebirth…

My feet hit the pedals like they're bricks. The wind flows through my hair like little fingers and I can almost taste the sun as it touches my lips. In this moment, I could go on forever. In this moment, I feel the warmth wrapped around my naked arms. We are one, breathing organism and I can feel every bump and bruise. We're all connected and breathing in each other's exhales; they reverberate through the wind.

I put my hand around your shoulder and somewhere someone feels the warmth. I give in to this idea.

Your breath clouds my window,
my tiny looking glass into the world.
You draw a smile in the fog,
my world brightens a bit.

Sliding into a deep tumble,
caught ever so softly in your grasp.
Fingers clutching fingers,
skin on skin.

I sleep at night to pass the hours
when all I want is to lie next to you,
studying every inch of your body.
Every touch, every taste.

I wish I knew the thoughts in your head.
I want to say all the right things.
You terrify me by being so comfortable;
cozy, safe, enveloping.

Still, those magic words haven't come,
it doesn’t feel so simple.
Love is a drug I grapple
with every ounce of my being.

I await the day you walk away -
from me, from this, from us.
Dread begetting regret of ever letting you in.
I keep these thoughts on the back of my mind.

I bite my tongue every time.
I keep it in every time.
You're on my mind all the time.
I'm nervous.