Met you the day I thought I'd die
You cured my ******* January blues
After losing all I had to lose
I called you knowing loneliness poison

Intending to one night stand
You up

Late night mellow rock and
Balcony smokes in ice age Michigan
Bodies moving like snowflakes
Tears melting like liberated ice
My old world fading like a faraway pebble's wakes
My love becoming so loud I couldn't hear a word again

In silence I heard violins
An invisible orchestra playing to
The life I thought I was conducting

Too late did I learn
I was merely another violin
There for you to play
And without you pulling at my heartstrings
I would fall out of tune
And into disrepair

I am a constellation
A baffling creation of unintentional art
A random selection of cells
That form no shape, no being

I am the outline in a child's activity book
Connect the dots
An undrawn picture
Of a previously imagined individual

We humans make pictures with the stars
We draw lines between the dots
We create pictures of the things we are familiar  with
Assuming one leads to two
Defining vast and undesigned constellations into images material possessions
Based only on their locations

I have been tracing the lines between the numbers
Drawing pictures of myself in the sky
Trying to define myself in a human way
Trying to find enough of myself to fill the outlines laid down for me

I cannot find the pieces
I cannot fit the shapes
The rigid lines between the stars
Drawn on your human map
Do not fit my soul
And cannot be filled with my mind
Too much and not enough simultaneously

I cannot be your connect the dot
I cannot find the proper path to the image you created of me
Cannot draw or walk or be the lines
You painstakingly wrote out for me to trace

For the lines you drew do not truly exist
You drew them there to make the inexplicable scattering of dots and stars more comprehensible
You wanted the Galaxy to be graced with familiarity

I am not familiar
I am simply a random selection of cells
Simply the dots
Simply the stars
With no images or meanings

It's excruciating
Being surrounded by laughter and love
While sitting behind a paper thin wall
Silently alone

It's horrifying
Hearing someone else's joyful speech
While trapped in a dark room with a locked door
Painfully aware

The taste in your mouth as you hold back tears
The secrets ringing in your ears
Body aching of pain
Mind aching of fear

~

First forced into silence
Forced into a game
Trained into shyness
Trained to feel shame

First he locked me out of his world
Our once shared consciousnesses became untwirled
Left me out of his mind
Finding a new life and leaving me behind

Second he locked me out of his presence
Refusing to touch me
Ignoring my essence
Declining to see me

Finally he locked me out of myself
My thoughts were confiscated
Creativity incarcerated in a small box on a high shelf
Breaking me until I was fully isolated

Everything I fix I break
And everything I break I lose
Please
don't let me try to fix you

Everything I give I take
And everything I take I bruise
Please
Don't let me give myself to you