paint you the sky,
   in gold
with pinkish-oranges
     and lampblack
contrasts

purplish coils
   and burning reds
holding your hand
      in the glow

of your terra cotta
     lamp
I promised
    that under

the blush
     of light blue
never knowing
     if I could ever

fulfill it.
    So this is
a canvas I
    painted, my dear.

Remembering
    how calm that
September horizon
    felt

touch it if
    you must, but it
is not finished
     yet, it is wet

not the masterpiece
    I promised you
then,

What about me do I want you to know?
I could say
I'm a lonely person
Who looks upon the world with a hunger
She doesn't understand.
Sometimes
I pass through the streets like a shadow
Gazing at the warm, rosy souls around me
And when people touch each other
Even in conversation, without noticing,
I ache with separateness
But not
With envy.

I could say
I'm a bit different
A bit dark,
I could say I've seen enough pain
To make me cruel
And that the only thing I'm truly proud of
Is that I am kind anyway.

I could tell you
That I've fallen in love with half a dozen strangers
Just for their eyes
And stayed there for years.
That although I rarely reach for anything,
I yearn in silence
Quietly smoldering, burning for a world full of rawness and contact,
But kept from it by a strangely thick skin
And brittle chinadoll bones.

I could tell you that when I choose to look into your eyes
And let you see the chaos in me
It is a gift which very few receive from me
And even fewer
Appreciate.

I could tell you that if you are gentle with me
I will mend every part of you that ever felt shattered
And meekly walk away when I am finished

I confess
I find it so much easier to be tender
To people who will forget me in the morning.
So much safer to run my fingers along the cheek of someone
Lost
To their need- whatever it may be-
Who won't
Or can't
Notice the hearth of my heart catching my ribs and sending cinders through my veins.
It is not love that makes me tender,
Although love blooms easily from my tenderness.
It is a fascination with other people's vulnerability
Their fragility
Their raw, honest desires and fears.
It draws me in and I spend all my days
Just tirelessly holding back arms that ache to comfort
And eyes that burn to see every dark corner of these intricate creatures I live near day after day
To see and understand and become,

Because I suppose the thing I'd most like to tell you
About me
Is that good and evil
Right and wrong
Mean very little to me, in the end:

I want to be.
I want to be
All.

I want to be every human thing there is
Touch it
Feel it
Taste it
Worship it.
I want to feel every wretched and exquisite thing I am capable of holding without shattering,
And I want to press them all with my palms
Into someone else's skin and watch them rise like ink.
It doesn't matter to me what you are, what you do,
Because whether it harms or mends I will look at you like a stained glass window
Like a statue of marble
Like a painting, all lit and framed and bursting with color.
I want
Every detail of this world
To touch every part of me
And that
Is what I should tell you now
Because that
Is what you will fear later.

The train is bright and empty
And it should be lonely, sitting here, hurtling through darkness, but I
Am in no state for people.
I am too far away.
Something is new in me.
Something is starting.
I move through the world every day
And I love it all, I do,
Love it to distraction, love it painfully, even
But
Distantly.
There is always something thin but impenetrable
Between me and all that I want to touch
To hold
To let crawl inside me and expand
So that maybe I'd be vast enough to hold this soul.
But tonight
That veil has peeled away-
No, it has fallen away
Like a sheet of fine silk, and I am
Raw
And new
And blinking in the light and everything
Is so saturated with color
And music
Thrums beneath the grinding of the rails.
It has been so long since everything could touch me.
I sit here and soak it in, a lover who has found everything to love
All of a sudden
And can do nothing but gaze.
All this
All this from someone,
And this is why
I just can't quit love.
This is why I try over and over,
Why I stay up nights wandering the darkened streets,
Why the hunger in my chest is something I treasure so excruciatingly.
Because the world is waiting
For you to find a reason to touch it,
And tonight I want my fingers to find every sidewalk crack and blade of grass,
Seek them like the skin of a lover in the dark- that gentle and that urgent-
And fill them all with silver light
And watch the world catch fire with what lives beneath my skin-
What lives here and has been sleeping
But is now suddenly, terrifyingly, gloriously
Awake.