I breathe in.
I breathe out.

The air is cold--
Or maybe that's
Just me.

My hands are icy,
But that's nothing new.

My heart is racing,
But I have yet to hear from you.

I can feel my pulse,
But I can't feel any blood.

My wrists don't ache,
But maybe they should
And I'm confused
Because isn't that
How anxiety presents itself
In the physical form?

But maybe this isn't
Anxiety.
Or maybe I don't
Have a physical form.

I breathe in.
I breathe out.

He whispers something kind under his breath.
Something that makes me stop going towards that light.

Something like
"I wouldn't want you to keep talking to me
If it makes you uncomfortable."

And I stop and I look over my shoulder
And he's looking down at his feet,
Remembering something good,
Something fun,
Something real.

I hear him again
"You're so kind and good. I'm sorry that happened to you."

And it makes me feel sick,
Because if I'm so kind and good,
Why did you leave?

And then I hear it
Over and over and over
Like the ghost of ex's past.

"Abuse abuse abuse abuse"
All my friends and loved ones
Chanting what a monster you are.
That it was all a game
All  a sham,
An act.

That it was just an act to you.

So I turn from the light.
And walk into something I'm new to.

I walk into the warmth of
Something I don't recognize.

It's called friendship.
It's called kindness.
It's called human decency.

You should look it up.

I breathe in.
I breathe out.

I've never been more myself
Yet I've never been more lost.

You know when you know you should feel something but you don't ?

You know when you go through the motions of the day but you're gone ?

You know when you know if you feel for one thing you will feel everything that is going wrong ?

That will hurt you
Everything that might destroy you.

And you're surrounded by it
By everything wrong.

I forgot how sad it felt
I forgot how mad I felt
I forgot everything that went wrong.

And here we are . . . .  

Affected by the experiences
Lost in the meaning of any of it
It's all irrelevant  
It's all meaningless
Then why am I here
When I don't care anymore
And I can't feel

All that's left is a reoccurring questioning of the self ..
When will I leave this state of limbo
And Will I ever leave this state of limbo
Maybe I won't

Once when I was young,* I was told you could swing so high you'd be able to just *fly away.  

   I learned early on
               That not everything we're told is true
               The fantastical can sometimes amount to a pile of plastic bags scattered in the wind
                    The end isn't always happy and there's not always closure
      Punctuations are more often question marks than definitive periods
                And looking for a definite explanation took prevalence over allowing our imaginations to fill in the blanks.
         Play time was replaced with study time,
             And before we knew it, it was time for work
                      We strayed from the playgrounds of our youth,
      Never returning to the top of the slide, we'd hit the ground a bit too hard to keep the enchantment of seemingly endless possibilities going
                                              Carriages became pumpkins long before midnight,
              And the school bell rang before we could finish our fun
                       But to tell the truth, sometimes,
     When everyone else has gone inside, back to the real world, full of logic and banalities,
         I sit on the old swingset kicking my feet
    Hoping it will let me *soar

Death is a classic clatter,
A primeval pattering
Or The ringing
Of Adam's house.

It patters
On every roof,
On every raod
And on every field.

At my door,
It rings,
At your window too,
As at your neighbor's.

The echo
OF our father's doorbell,
And the same
Is in space.

It reverberates
With the sun,
And when
Hollow is dark.