My heart is like a photo album
Filled only with pictures
Of you.

A thousand times a day,
I lose myself
Between its pages.

But it doesn't keep me warm.
Not in the way that
You did.

So I freeze over for a while
And hibernate within my
Frosted flesh.

In aimless pursuit
Of nothing in particular,
January chills my bones.

Painted white by the winter,
I wait for spring
To thaw me out.

There is no question that I am
More than my mind.
Only a sliver of my being
Resides within my soul shell.
And yet,
There is no emptiness.
I am always graced with the presence
Of Self.
With Self I fill every vacant cavity
In my earthly body.
A joyful light
Fills me to the brim-
Every love I've ever known
Runs through me
Like glitter glue
In my veins.
This is all
Perfectly instrumented-
I am at home
In my own company.
Self and I,
We walk together,
And discuss
Our favorite shades of green.

At the breakfast table-
Visions of my mother
Slicing strawberries
For my cereal.

Her hands..
Purposeful, skilled.
Beholding a lifetime
Of textured dexterity.

And now I sit,
Alone in the same chair,
Stirring milk
Into my coffee.

No longer bound there
By dependence,
I slice strawberries
For my cereal.

Yes, I often sit and think about all the times
I was wrong.
And I wonder if you think about them as often
As I do.

It seems that I make mountains
Out of molehills.
All my lovers have told me
Silently.

I fear that I feel everything
So deeply
That I can hardly make the distinction
Between them.

All too quickly, the good enough
Was gone,
And the only adequacy we fostered
Was in the way we conversed
With our tongues.
Time after time,
Words failed to consecrate our
Understanding,
Left to dangle pathetically in the empty space
Where love should have been.

And so without fail,
The inky blackness of night returned
To overtake me.
I felt my way through the void,
Tripping over our skeletal remains,
Longing for the warm embrace of the familiar.
For hours,
I sat on the front steps of the morning,
Waiting for it to let me in.

I'd come to find that it was hardly ever lonely
In the place between the darkness
and the light.

I'm more vulnerable
Than I'd like to be
While holding your hand
With my heart on my sleeve.

To reach out and grab it
Would be easy, it's true.
I could be yours
In a second or two.

No means of defense
With our fingers entwined,
Yet I've never seen hands
Fit so perfect in mine.

My instinct is pressing,
It whispers, "Let go..
If he takes your heart,
He takes all the control."

These are uncharted waters
I'm diving into.
But I think I'll be happy,
If I'm swimming with you.