Just because you can’t hear me doesn’t mean I’m not there.
Every moment is a waking nightmare
Of anxiety and all I see’s a dangerous path that leads to apathy.
Just because I’m still kicking and breathing and fighting
Doesn’t mean that I’m not struggling
Doesn’t mean that I’m not juggling every single task
With kicking, breathing, and fighting just to stay afloat.
Just to keep from drowning.
Just to keep from shaking and crying and breaking and dying and
Screaming out to the world

I am not okay!

And you know what that’s okay.
Because I don’t have to be okay every single day just to be able to say
Everything is fine.
Everything is not fine.
And when the world comes crashing down around you
And you feel like you’re about to burst because of all the emotions that you aren’t feeling
And when the world starts reeling and spinning under your feet
And you feel like you’re sinning because you don’t feel complete,
Take a moment

To breathe.

Because no matter what you believe
One day you will feel again
You’ll feel the sun on your face, a loved one’s embrace and then
You’ll finally feel
alive.

I think about her naked sometimes
I probably think about it
because I doubt she would give me the satisfaction
of touching her in the heat of passion
so it’s just easier for me to imagine
walking in on her in the bath, drinking a glass of red
maybe cabernet sauvignon, who knows, who cares?
a light steam rising off the foamy suds
they cover only what I want to see
even in my fantasies I like to be teased
she is calm
as though she left the door unlocked intentionally
waiting like a painting in a gallery for me to clumsily stumble in
and find her beautifully sprawled in a Victorian tub with copper clawfeet
painted wet-on-wet like a portrait by John Singer Sargent
her milky blue and marble eyes soften my will like whiskey
and I find myself kneeling beside the bath
my hand gently trembles as it glide against satin velvet skin

I have found love hidden between the low valley's of your perfectly high fingers. Love that I thought was lost at sea, and would be much too drenched anyway to bother to be found.
I have found love in the dark universe beyond your mouth and with teeth like stars, I think your lips are mouthing "I love you too", like pearly gates, voice like velvet ropes, pulling them either closed or apart.
I can almost see your skin light up when I grace my fingertips against your bare chest.
Cold, yearning to be warmed, if only by one small hand. As if my fingertips are the keys to unlock years of quiet defiance.
Our hands fit perfectly, I think that means you have the key to me too.
You are so soft, so tender, I am afraid that if I beg to caress your delicate face, you just might melt below my warmth, but I am a puddle of melted snow competing with just brewed coffee, and eyes all the warmer.
Thank god, thank god, thank god.
I am frozen solid, and somehow, you've thawed me all out, and didn't just mop me up.
You are so beautiful. Sometimes I just want to sit with you in your car. Just look at you. I want it to rain hard against your windows, on your roof, and I want to kiss you even harder.
Want thunder and lightning to cower in the strength of our lips.
I will just listen to the rhythms of your breaths until I've figured you out.
Until I understand what makes you smile without even flinching.
Until I understand love.
If I could possibly be any closer to you than we are right now, I'd be a glacier, transformed into faint summer rain.
I'd pour and pour and pour, if I could wither away with you.
"Won't you just hold me, just don't say a word."
Suddenly it is a desert in here
and my ice cube walls are coming down quickly.
You are less an inferno, more a kindling fire, to a shivering soul.
You are the only one who would never burn me down.
Thank you for being my only source of heat.