the silence at night,
when the house is quiet
and i have not spoken in hours,
overwhelms my mind

and i have to fight to convince myself i exist
when there is no one to acknowledge my existence
no voice to break the silence
no laughter to fill the empty space

you mourn for the things others have.

a young love, reciprocated.
the feeling of being wanted and wanting.

dinner dates and laying out under the stars.
being able to hold hands.

knowing that you have someone waiting to see you.

romanticized ideals of love, undoubtedly,
yet things you never came close to having.

you mourn for the things you watched others have,
because you know you will not have them.

fragile and out of place

taking a breath and your chest is too big
the air doesn’t reach your lungs

and the world feels infinitely large
but contained within you swelling

it’s quiet inside, underneath
the clamoring shouting voices silent, still

you feel weightless
you feel solid
you feel peaceful

And this is it
Do you want to know
the way the world turns?
The way the universe spins
past galaxies and stars,
shattering and reforming.
Endlessly.

How should we count
the falling of the stars
in a glass that does not break.

Do you feel the breath
of the imposter
burning down your neck?
Holding over you
like fire and flame.

All this and more
yet you still do not find it’s meaning.

Seen from a far off field
like a dream fading into distance,
beneath the surface of waking thought.

You do not find this thing
you are looking for,
you must find the place it is built.

For there is where you will make your peace with it,
learn to hold its hand
through the lonely night
when all else has gone to sleep.

I pick out all the pretty colors just for you. Wear them on my sleeve, bright and shining.
I grew a heart just for you. Just for them.
I grew a heart with their help. Watered it, nurtured it, watched it blossom.

I held on to what I could when the storm came through. In the moving, in the chaos, lost what was planted.
I felt nothing but loose strings and empty bottles, rolling through the house. Built up around the wreckage, pulling in the walls, stapling the floorboards.

From afar it still looks like a house. But it’s built on corks and bottle caps that I hide the   number of. In its center sits the space that remind of which I cannot mend.