You know that feeling
When you're standing on the edge of somewhere
Very high
And for a moment
For whatever reason
The muscles in your legs and feet
Roll just a little forward
And you sway towards that fall
And before the vertigo sets in,
Before the fear blooms like weeds in the core of your
Stomach,
There is a moment of utter awe?
That is how it feels to look at her.
I say awe,
It may not be the right word,
I considered "peace" or "joy"
But
See
Awe is both, perhaps,
But also neither.
Awe has the high stakes,
Awe is part fear part love,
And while peace settles in you like a comfy chair,
Awe soars like a rollercoaster hill,
And that's the real feeling,
As closely as I know how to say it.

I have a secret
That I dare not even whisper aloud.
It gnaws at me,
Makes me scared.
For years
My dream has been you.
For years and years, every single falling star
Has had your name attached.
Every wish I made
Was you.
Everything I wanted
Was you.
If somebody asked me
At any moment in time
What it was I wanted most in the entire world,
I would have instantaneously answered:
You.
And the thing that scares me so,
That I dare not say with my lips,
Is that
The other night
A star fell
And I wished
With my entire soul
To be with her.
And now,
Now if someone were to ask me
What I want more than anything in the world
More than breath
More than life
More than home
I am trying to avoid knowing
That my answer
Is no longer
You.

Oh, I should have been fog and not a person.
Fog or sunlight,
Something untouchable
And unintrusive.
Something easily waved away or shaded from.
It is so tiresome
To be a person,
To *crave the way souls do.
I am sorry, love,
That I am so coarse and revealed,
That I cannot fade into the background
So quickly
So seamlessly
As I usually can.
I promise I usually can- I have made a life of it.
This is bad form, on my part,
A slip, a trip-and-fall, a faux pas.
I have been undone
And it seems I'm caught unaware and unprepared,
Scrambling, trying to tug my skin over the parts of my soul
Where it has unraveled and failed me
Its usual disguise.
Where, I wonder, does my mind's gory skin-and-bones sense of touch come from?
Maybe my body
Is where the feelings live and char everything.
Maybe if I could lose the canvas and frame,
The paintings in blood scrawled by all my stumbles into love,
Maybe this gauche, needy thing I call a soul
Would get gone too,
And I could comfortably be something....
Untouchable- Fog, or sunlight.
Something less lonely and less weak.
But I have this pounding pulse
And this fluttering stomach
And this aching heart
And these bones full of hollow light,
And they control me,
And my skin is a fragile lantern that makes a blazing holocaust look like a tealight candle
From outside.
It is flimsy as wet paper, stretched tight
Over the searing claws and fangs of a soul
So
Hungry for this world,
For the things I love
That in fear and resignation my heart
Scores little hashmarks into the cage of my ribs
Counting each tremulous day
One more
That hasn't ripped me to shreds just yet.