Sitting here, glancing around
Avoiding eyes, avoiding words
Passing through lives,
Wisps of people rushing by
From muted cities.

I only wish I would meet you
Surrounded by daisies
Infinitely shining and spinning
Only your eyes keeping me caught
In one reality.

If I could just touch your hand
and shiver with elation.
Fingertips playfully mingling, unaware
of the rest of each other
for the moment,
and the universe would sigh
with warm relief.

Simply I want you to hold me
like you've never held a thing before me,
like you've never even known
what it is to hold something
before your hands reached round
to grip my weakened body.

Weak in all the best ways,
Exhausted from happiness,
my face pained from how often
you make it smile.
And I'll be as perfectly content
as a leaf on the breeze, swept up and falling,
falling fast in ecstasy.

And I'll be as agonizingly breakable,
as a thin glass ornament,
dangling helplessly,
catching all the light of the world,
prisms of color reflected in my eyes.

Everything about you will be gorgeous.
every hair, every discoloration,
every subtle expression
will be another reason I'll have
to love you unconditionally.

Without even the condition
that you love me back.
Without even the hope
that I will have you forever.
Without even the guarantee
that you won't cut me off and watch
when I shatter.

A fast-playing sequence of precise movements,
together forming an obstacle
of body and mind. 

An array of barriers waiting to be broken by some
unexpected burst of adrenaline.
The science of organized chaos, coming together
for one simple series of numbers,
displayed in red.


An endless well of pressure to be better
than the body will allow. 

Medals to be displayed like frozen
moments of past glory.
Measurement of skill based on insignificant pieces of time.

But they are significant.

Determining a lifetime of stories in
one
slow-motion
moment.



The race is free from the pressure, the voices, the science,
but not the pain.

The pain drives the mind to the edge,
by some miracle it doesn't fall. 

There's only the touch of the water, 

holding you back, shoving you forward.

Your reasons for being where you are are reduced to one:
Love. 
Love of the glory, the pride, the rush.
Love of the spirit.

Love of the sport.


For some, swimming is a simple act
of getting across a pool. 

For me, its everything else.

It’s a building nausea,
from the bottom up.
I feel it coming on,
my face begins to flush.
Eyes watery with rejection,
mouth dry with jealousy.
Hands shaky with anger,
stomach churning violently.
You knew that I was fragile.
You had to know I’d break.

Words are not enough.
I talk and talk, they tumble out in heaps.
You toss them to the curb.
After all, why bother?
My words are not enough.
I hurl them at you blindly.
They graze your fingers as
you run them through your hair.
My desperate words are not enough.
You shake them to the dirt.
They’re meaningless, I guess.
I meant them to be more.

I saw you from afar,
and loved you from a distance.
You kissed me like a secret prince,
compliments like glass slippers.  

But taken in the night,
I pressed myself too close.
You kissed me like a bandit,
stealing things away.

You held my eyes in yours,
I loved you even then.
You kissed me like a prisoner,
I grasped at shards of glass.

Impulsive, passionate,
Intelligent and baffled,
She runs from aspirations out of reach.
Lovely and wistful.
Overwhelmed, fragile.
She hides from all the things she cannot hide.
Broken and crying.
Melancholy, stubborn.
She grasps at like and lust to ease the pain.
Willful and driven.
Determined, secure.
She loves illusions, holds them to her breast.