I want nights with you.

I want to shut the door on the world, unlace my armor and take off my masks. I want to leave it all behind, one naked soul meeting another at an oasis of trust. I want your body moving in rhythm with mine. I want racing hearts and gasping breaths and sweaty sheets. I want to learn every inch, every curve, every corner of you. I want to feel you nestle your body into the curve of mine, lay your head on my shoulder, and pull my arm around your waist. I want your fingers to intertwine with mine as if they always belonged there. I want my thumb to trace idle circles on your skin as I lose consciousness, for no other reason than the joy of feeling your skin against mine, no other reason than it feels like the most natural thing in the world. I want to drift off to sleep with the smell of you in my head, the feel of your heart beating in time with mine, the warmth of you against me.

I want mornings with you.

I want tingles in my arm as another reminder of you using me as a pillow. I want sunlight peeping across your face, transforming your hair splayed across the pillow into a radiant halo. I want to see you lying next to me. I want to trace with my eyes every curve that I mapped with my body. I want to see the rise and fall of your breath, and feel each one whisper against my skin. I want to hide under covers, pretending the sun has not come and enjoying the shared heat of two bodies intertwined. I want frowzy hair, wide yawns, and tender sleepy smiles. I want sudden heat in my belly. I want to forget about bed head and morning breath and become so aware of you I can hardly breathe. I want to wake you up with tender kisses, and with scorching ones. I want to untangle myself from you (eventually), and rise to take on a new day and new challenges.

I want days with you.

I want challenge and adventure. I want to hike and climb and swim with you. I want to take on nature’s greatest obstacles together and come out on the other side as champions. I want coffee shop dates and deep talks about life. I want to get inside your head and understand what drives you and what scares you. I want to know where you’ve come from and where you’re going, your hopes and fears and dreams and nightmares. I want to laugh with you until I can’t breathe. I want other people to look at us like we’re crazy, and know that they’ll never understand all the fun we have. I want to sit on park benches and people-watch with you. I want you to curl into the crook of my arm and lay your head on my shoulder like it’s home. I want to point out the old man teaching a young passerby the finer points of chess. I want you to show me the children screaming and laughing as they flee from each other in an endless game of tag. I want to experience life side by side with you.

I want to close the circle. I want to go from night to morning to day, and start all over again.

I want you, and I can’t seem to get enough.

He’s rattling the bars of his cage again.
It’s been hours since the last time he was fed
And the longer he starves the angrier he gets
I’ve tried every last trick I possess
Throwing him old bones
(He’ll gnaw on those for a while)
Telling him stories of make-believe
(Which he likes, but they can’t last forever)
Eventually I have nothing left to offer him
So I sit
While he rages
Well fed, he’s a perfect angel
There’s no need for bars or lock and key
For so long there was no shortage of food
And then the famine came
Rations twice a day, maybe more if we’re lucky
He hasn’t taken kindly to the new way of things
The shaking grows more furious
It won’t be long before he breaks free
Turns out the angrier he gets the stronger he gets too
(That thing was never meant to hold him anyway)
With a sickening wrench the cage door rips free
He storms up and down
Overturning everything in his path
While I hide in the corner
Praying for more food to come soon

“Please, oh please don’t move”
I whisper under my breath
I don’t want to forget this moment
Drawing the sketchbook from under my arm
With quick strokes I capture the scene
A rough sketch
Just enough to remember it later
My subject, unaware, stirs
The moment is gone
But I will carry it with me
The sketchbook a weight on my heart
Until I return to my room and behind closed door
With furious strokes bring to life on the page
The moment that I witnessed before
Pouring self into art
Until at last I am empty and the burden is lifted
Always the artist, never the subject
Capturing these visions
That come so few and far between
Until now
It seems that I can’t keep up with them
One piling on top of another
As I frantically scribble, trying not to miss a single one
Never have these solitary wanderers
Come in such numbers
They seem to be drawn to you
And when at last I have etched
These precious moments into immortality
I cannot help but bring my work to you
An artist showing his subject his art
Not expecting to see you reach behind your back
And bring forth a sketchbook of your own

It’s 12:44 AM
And I can’t stop smiling
That seems to happen a lot these days
It’s honestly a wonder no one notices
How I’m always in a patch of sunshine
Maybe no one else can see the light
I suppose they’d have had to have been there
When I bottled it up in the first place
Pouncing on the sparkle of your laugh
As you threw your head back
And it bubbled up from your belly
Dancing across your face
Fleeting, but I was quicker
They must have missed
When my phone suddenly blazed with light
And I was ready with my jar
Time after time
Until the jar was so bright I could hardly look right at it
I’m home now
And the jar still holds all its brilliance
Well after midnight
And it looks like a sunny afternoon in here
Going to sleep is going to be
Rather a challenge

Three knocks on the door.  
My time is up.
People say no one is ever forced to the stake
That every victim goes willingly
Walking with firm step toward their fiery fate
And no one knows why.
The few of us that remain stay out of sight
Hidden in basements, in attics, in darkened storage rooms
Hardly daring to move, desperate to avoid drawing any attention from them.
Legends say they are the ones who have gone to the stake
And endured its fiery embrace
Stepping forth, reborn,
To draw out those who are left
As offerings to the flame as well
Whether that is true I cannot say
But I have heard the shrieks from that dreadful pyre
(Of agony or ecstasy, I cannot say)
And have no desire to be the next victim
The handle turns, the door creaks open
Light footsteps brush along the floor
I try to curl inward on myself, shrink into my corner of the attic
And the footsteps stop
And into the silence she speaks
For a fight I was prepared
For search and struggle and seizure
But the words, leaving her lips
Dart throughout the house, up the stairs
Past all my defenses and find me cowering in the corner--
Words not of stakes and fire and burning
But of life and laughter
Charming little fellows, they take me by the hands
Effortlessly navigating in reverse
Every trap and alarm I had so carefully placed
Leading me down the stairs
Step
By step
As we near the bottom, I can see a ring of light on the floor
A torch, surely, to illuminate the way in this darkened abode
Eyes downcast, my feet leave the last step
Finding purchase on the rough stone floor
There is no torch
A pair of bare feet enter my vision and I realize
The warm glow cast all around
Comes directly from her
In shock my eyes snap upwards to meet hers
Twin suns, radiant skin, framed by living, flowing flame
A warm, inviting smile
And in that moment I am lost
I know now why there is no struggle
Why each victim freely chooses the stake and the fire
I take her now outstretched hand
Almost--but not quite--too hot to bear
And begin my journey
Toward the stake
The flame
And her embrace

Once I believed I was a lump of coal
Dead and burned out

Now I see I was a raging wildfire
Simply waiting for your spark

I never thought this tiny metal band would weigh so much
It might as well be a millstone tied around my neck
And it drags me down, down, down
I hope there's an ocean floor down there somewhere
They say you'll find everything you ever wanted when you finally touch bottom
But no one knows how far it is to the floor
(And some people seem to get there sooner than others)
My lungs burn, but it's not so bad, I guess
You get used to not having air after a while
Some people don't even know what a lungful feels like--
Aren't they the lucky ones!
Memories still linger of gasping breaths
Times when I fought this weight and swam to the surface
Oh the sweet feeling of oxygen in my lungs!
The light winking on the water, the lazy waves rolling along, the warm sun on my face!
And the tempting sight of those tiny figures high overhead
Those who have left the ocean altogether and taken to the skies
Soaring and pinwheeling through the air
Rising on updrafts just to fold their wings and plummet towards the water's surface
In dizzying displays of graceful acrobatics
Join us in the skies! they call
Leave the weight behind!
(It's only pulling you down anyway)
What you thought were fins are actually wings and you were meant to FLY!
How tempting their offer sounds!
How could anything that awaits on the ocean floor
Compare to the thrill of flight and the joy of these majestic beings?
All it would take is to let the weight go--
(Come to think of it, this thing isn't even tied to me--
I've been clutching it this whole time!)
Let the weight go, and grab on as one of these sky-dwellers
Dive-bombs the water's surface, hand outstretched
To ****** me up and carry me aloft
Where I will join in their graceful dance.
But of course, it's not that simple
Drop the weight, and it sinks to the bottom without you
They say anyone who takes to the skies, and then chooses to return to the sea
Can only get to the bottom one way:
Swimming.
Few make it all the way down--
Their lungs scream for air as they struggle for the ocean floor
And often, worn out, they float to the surface once more
Unable to make it without a weight to help them down
Banished to the skies by their own choices
Torn between the pull of the weight and the siren call of the sky,
I remain at the ocean's surface
Treading water
And getting tired.