With trembling hands I kiss you goodnight with my thoughts weighing me down and turning my stomach into knots like there's a storm inside my brain.

I can't even form a sentence because every letter feels like thorns caressing my lips.

I want to tell you I love you but I'm afraid of the thorns tearing my lips apart so I will stay quiet .

I hug you with my screaming thoughts and hope you can't hear the thorns shredding my tongue to pieces.

Sometimes I feel like a polar bear cub crawling out of a den where I've been asleep for months born blind and deaf into the dark and cold,  when I emerge from the den everything is so beautiful and new, scary and cold, stumbling on my hardly used legs, still learning to walk opening my eyes for the first time.

Those three words feel like a swarm of bees buzzing in my mouth and making it hard to think, I'm scared you can hear them stinging my lips and tongue,  I'm afraid to open my mouth and say those three words to you because I don't want you to get stung, so I will swallow them down and let them sting my insides  all the way to my bones where they can make a home inside my skin.

My shaky hands delicately hold a cigarette while the waves crash against my skull so that I can no longer think.

I will take another puff in hopes it will make the waves subside so I can fall into a slumber that will fight the storm inside my mind.