My stomach is a series of knots
slowly suffocating my breath
so my brain can’t focus
and my mind starts racing.
Salt water fills my eyes
until it overflows and spills
out onto the skin that’s crawling
over the anxiety that I fear
may scare you away.
You are the fresh air
in the bland, stale world
to which my life became.
My heart isn’t ready to lose you
before it even has you.

This is me.
I'm not perfect.
Take it or leave it.

I don’t remember how it’s supposed to feel
when you’re falling in love.

If it’s an unrelenting need to lie beside someone
whose touch tingles every inch of your skin
until goose bumps lift each hair follicle so high
that you get chills down your back,
where their breath’s embrace so sweetly warms the chill away…
then I’ve got that.

If it’s also an incessant fear that you will mess up so badly
that you feel all insecurities race through your vessels
until they reach whatever lobe of your brain
that controls your emotions
and cause you go completely insane
until the moment you get to speak again…
then I’ve also got that.

Deep in my gut is a chest of secrets
I thought I had buried
beneath the hushed cries of a young 20-something’s
most regretted decisions…
give-ins, rather.

Those cries choked me until I finally had the sense
to close my eyes and stop breathing for a few seconds.
And these eyes have stayed dry ever since.
When you don’t give yourself the opportunity to feel,
there isn’t much that can tear at your seams…

…Until one day
the purest of phrases
and the most genuine gazes
slowly un-sew the web wrapped neatly around
the cavity I filled with dirt and bubble wrap.

It may only take one more smile
for me to hand over my shovel.

When you hear the metal collide,
I’ll guide you to the key.

Your breath
against
my back
is the comfortable embrace
I never expected
to envelop
so quickly
and never expected
to feel
so safe.