how can you know a feeling
if you've never felt it before

realizing that
it has finally absorbed into my pores
overthrown my body
and taken up residence
in the oceanic depths
the Marianas Trench of my heart
now holding the reins
a nameless shadow living in my chest cavity
and eating away at the resolve
that has shackled me
and driven me on slick black asphalt
into palpable darkness of
a world i've never seen

how can you feel
when you don't have words

holding a dictionary to my heart
and praying to the gods
Merriam
Webster
to provide me with the
mixture of letters that might
shatter my muteness
and provide
permutations of syllables to
intercede for me
and finally give me
a label for those ephemeral tendrils
i feel protruding from me
and reaching
reaching
for you

how can i use a word
that is merely ink on a page
when this inundation
has flooded the streets of
my hometown
swept me away
and the only anchor i can find
is the chocolate profundity
of your eyes
that you lower in
what is that emotion
another word without meaning
that lives more as a
crushing pressure
grinding my bones to dust
shrinking me to a singular point in space
and time

time

you tell me to go slow
slow down
but how can i when my foot
is glued to the accelerator
and i am driving full force
into the brick wall of
more emotions i can't
touch

always just out of my
groping hands
calling your name and
the only word i have found
that seems to incapsulate
this churning rapacious feeling and
exquisite pain that
needs simply a word to
help you understand
because you can't feel what i feel
though i would allow you
to vagabond through my cerebellum
and maybe spend a night
in the absolute obsidian night
of my cerebrum
where that unnameable emotion
is the only thing
that can keep me warm

i'm an alien without country
without language to
communicate with this foreign world
where i have latched on
to you
your remora
for you most certainly are a shark
circling your prey
and i wait to be devoured

i welcome your destruction
the fires that rage from
the tips of your fingers
as they trace the lines of my
enemy body
ready to explode with
that emotion you urge me
to put away
to repress
and wait for another day
to inform you that
i love you
even if you don't love me back.