I can feel my mind
reaching toward
indifference.
It's like I'm on a train,
between stops,
slowly rocking
back and forth
back and forth
back and
then
jolted
to one side—
a reminder.

I often find that when I am naked,
I lose boundaries.
I don't know where my skin ends
and the world begins.

When I lie in bed, I become part of its cotton comforter and sheets.

When I walk around my house, I become part of the nest:
I am the hearth, the warmth, and settling dust.

When I was with you, I
became part of you.
I was your skin,
you were mine.
I was your Sunday night stubble,
your whispers and breathy chuckles. I was
your short fuse and forced
indifference,
your silence.

When we tried to pull our
boundaries back,
we fought.
We tore uneven
       borders.

I took some of you, you took
some of me.

The stars in my eyes
blinded me
from the truth.

I have given you
so many things.
With a child's light innocence,
I've handed you my creations,
my emotions, my affection
(everything
I value most).

You took them,
excitedly at first, hung them up,
saved them in a box.
But as time wore on
and the novelty wore out,
you took it all
with a thin smile
and threw it in the trash.

The ***** of my feet burn,
my arches ache,
I'm exhausted.
I will fall. We will fall
apart

again.
Whiplash from leaning
one way then
the other so quickly.
I used to want to be near
you all the time but now...
Now, I still do. But we are constantly at
odds, wanting something,
some
thing the other isn't ready for.

We move together, fall
apart, move
together, fall
apart,
move

together,
fall

apart.

I've written a dozen poems
for each feeling I've ever had--
for every miniscule crush,
a simple flutter or skipped beat of my heart,
for every tear that blurred my sight and
salted my tongue (raising my blood pressure),
for literal and figurative red on my hands
or another's bloodthirsty lips,
for the swinging doors in my life,
coming and going before I've finished exhaling,
for the revolving doors who always usher in
the same breeze, the same dust, the same litter,
for the stones in my stomach that never pass
(or pass painfully),
for my trembling fingers and the hands that
steady them (or the hands that don't).
For every breathe I take,
there is a poem in my head,
but I look at you,
I touch you, I kiss you,
and

Salvador Dali's clocks have better timing
than my feelings do.