I live in a glass house
built up on polite smiles
and forced laughter.

A house that I want
everyone to look into.
But one I never look out of,
to see you walking home alone,
on these dark empty streets
with lonely branches and street lamps
as company.

If I could see you
I would love you.

Because then I would understand
that love is

listening to you sing in the shower
to an audience of watered down
shampoo bottles
and gray bars of soap.

It is seeing you stare
out your solitary window
looking for stars in a city
whose lights are too bright.

It is feeling your heart beat
under thin cotton sheets, while
your mother and father
are fighting in the hallway
and you feel like these 17
years have been a waste
because you are just a child
holding a blanket again.

I’ve kept my shades down
and my doors locked
but the foundations of my
house are cracking like thin ice on
a January morning.

I have learned that
obligatory hugs
in the hallways, at dances, and at train stations
do not substitute for love.

Love lives beyond borders,
and fences, and walls, and barriers.

Ones that I’ve been to frightened
to jump over.


But if I knew what it felt like
to hold you under the covers
to keep you as warm as these
cold hands could.

To hear you in your silence screaming
in whispers, just like I am.

If I could look at your almond eyes
and your gawky arms,
and your spongy fingers,
and your silky hair.

And let the colors wash away, and the noises
fade out, and let the scratchy feeling of
reality become soft like your fingertips grazing my skin.

I would realize that the two different
houses we live in, share common ground.

Help me leave this house
that I’ve built on fear of honesty and
hold your hand, because in between the
spaces our fingers intertwine
is your heart and mine.

Building a new home,
with cement made of vulnerability,
and bricks made of acceptance.