I took a bath
The other day
After looking at your Instagram
And seeing a photo of you on your birthday
You are wildly different now
Then you were when I last saw you

You were so sweet with a sleepy in your eye
And smile in mind
So confused when you asked “What?” “Why?”

Now honey you’re almost ugly in your darkness  
But the curve of your brow, the shape of your teeth, the beak in the center of your face
I’m still fond I’m still sweet on all of it
I still want you in my bath
But I guess I probably don’t want you, you
I want old young you and old young me
Sitting in my tub
Making bubbles
Playfully disrespecting each other
You were a bit of magic in my potion bottle
That never stops giving
I have no angst or pain associated with our parting
Because our meeting was so perfect
I wonder if you remember it too
Or maybe you blocked me out

Either way, you’re in my mind
Always laughing in the dark looking so ******* sublime.

I forgot that I’m a lover
I mean I guess I always knew
But I forgot I’m the kind of lover
Who’ll kiss and kiss and kiss until we’re blue
The kind who’ll miss and miss and miss the sensation of a you
Who
I enjoy

Afraid
Of a good feeling
You see, it always goes wrong
Afraid of I don’t even know what
Because I’m too scared to look through the door.

Enamored
By this weightless feeling
That’s evaded me for so long
Such an immediate
Intimate
Thing

I forgot what the feeling was like
And the power it can have
What if you wreck my life
What if I do?
What if I forget all my plans
And abandon myself again
I’ve done it so many times
What if it happens again with you

Feeling pathetic and these emotions that well up inside
Triggered by this feeling that should just feel good
But it’s doesn’t feel just good it feels terrifying
I’m shell shocked
I don’t know what this means
Now suddenly my age matters to me
My desires are foreign to me
I’m scared to lose myself again
I’m scared to be torn apart

But so so so so so so so much more afraid than I ever thought I was
I had no idea I was still shaking
I had no idea I was still wailing
I had no idea I was still this girl in the dark
I thought I was doing so much better than I am

But how can I say no to me and yes to me at once?
How can I deprive myself of this maybe good thing
How can I offer myself this maybe bad thing

Where are these feelings from?
Me? Or you?

If I’m honest
And I pretend that I’m calm and cool
I’d say they’re from me
But
You like me too and now mine have doubled
Maybe
Or maybe they were already doubled
Who am I.
Where did this girl come from again.
This slick emotional heap that I’ve shamed for her passion because I thought it was sick
But now I’m feeling something I don’t want to resist

Yes we’ve been here before. But maybe we haven’t, I don’t know. How do you know the difference between what you’ve always known and it’s many many iterations and something you’ve never known that could appear the same?

Is this how I felt before? Last year? With the orange and black and the blue?
I have no clue. I was different then and I’m different now but also I’m exactly the same girl with exactly the same fears
I don’t know
It’s a lot but also isn’t it not so much?

Confronted with fear and in realizing I’m more afraid, more traumatized than I thought.
Its gotten so bad before.
How do we go slow? I do not know.

I can learn I hope. Or maybe it’ll all be okay and it’ll all work out for the best. I just don’t want to suffer in the middle, I will work hard and try and be smart and good but I don’t want to be hit anymore. It’s already been so bad, and the more I heal it seems to get better.

I can’t even hear for the fear.

I loved to watch you eat
You were like a gopher and a very silly shark
You would take a cute little bite
And then rub your fingers back and forth
and very politely lick only just the very barely inside of your lips
And sometimes if it was a very good bite
you would straighten your shoulders a little more
almost like a cartoon soldier coming home from war
It was a delight to watch you eat
actually
And then sometimes so satisfied
Your pronounced brow would hitch downward
Tugging downward past your eye
Looking at the mushroom like a pirate
or a very sneaky antagonist leopard
in a cartoon about leopard
rivalries.
A quick "Mmmm" would mutter from your mouth
and I enjoyed you nearly as much as you enjoyed that bite

You're still my vice baby
It scares me how much I love the thought that I could be yours too
The idea that I'm not
I push away
As it tries to confirm old beliefs that I am not enough
That what I want will not come to me

Because I live anew
Now
What I want lands in my path
"I am abundance" I repeat as I fall asleep

I hope with tearful eyes
And shaking breath
And that sweet earnest quiver in the bridge of my nose
That one day you won't be my vice
That you'll be my good morning
Or my Tuesday afternoon
That we'll be in tune
Like we were in June and May and October and December

I don't want anything from you that you don't want though
And how hard to know what to want
When I'm afraid.
I don't want to live in fear
So I must live apart

But is it all so dramatic anyway?

I don't want to always be so deliberate in my wants

It's not all love and romance

It's just a normal day
Meaning passing between us

Is what I pretend.
But really.
Fervently, I love you.

I love your jaw and your voice.
I love your laugh
How giddy you become like a child smiling at the sun
I love your mania
I love your crazy eyes alight in the moon
I love your BELIEF I love your ******* earnest sincerity.
Who the **** else is earnest like that?
It's gorgeous, I'm obsessed.
I could drink and bathe in your sincerity.

A bless or a curse to be the object of my obsession
I worry how my attraction to you would affect you
Would it be too much?

I think so.
Read the signs, see the facts
When someone tells you who they are believe them and all of that...
But, I'd rather not?
Instead I want to think that when we stood behind your house smoking that joint trying to stay away from the wind that you felt the tension too.

I love the way you wear boots.
I love the way sweaters hang on your shoulders.

****, each time I revisit your room in my mind I must confirm again and again with growing certainty that I am obsessed with you.

Each one giving for the other.

But then we were giving too much
From a place we didn't have to give from
From dry wells we fed each other our earth
When what the other needed was sunshine and water

But we hid together beneath the earth
Building little tunnels between our wells
Digging out the earth underneath
Forming a wide chasm between our wells
Earth cleared out by our most ancient thoughts

Our network of tunnels
Each giving consent to our nightmarish coping
Easily excavating thousands of avenues
A complex and beautiful city grid
An Atlantis a la toxic-lovers-just-learning-to-love-well built in the earth and clay at the bottom of these wells becoming one
Sweeping breaths pouring more and more illness through our tunnels

Our relationship built of the mutual chemical compounds in the poison cups we drank each day and then began to feed to each other.

We needed therapy and instead we held each other on the shower floor wailing and surviving by filling each other up with the others' insides, then dumping that new cocktail back into the other, over and over and over again. For a few moments balancing our sloshing insides between our mouths.

Each one giving for the other.

I am learning to be free
I am learning to stop giving into the feeling that I am being watched
I am learning to lose myself in the present
I am learning to stop trying so hard to be anything other than what I am
I am learning to indulge myself in my every whim
Why not?
I’ve gone my whole life not indulging, judging, chastising, trying to fit, trying to be everyone’s cup of tea.
It didn’t work and I didn’t like it.
Now I think I will just be.