“Come closer,” you beckoned
Your fingers like strings
Pulling me out
Where I lay cocooned
Inside the smell of rain
I stood my ground
Fought as you
Sought me out
I have grown roots
In the confines
In the comforts
In the eye of the storm
Two seconds more
Let me sleep
One second more
Until my very hands
Will pull myself out

These parallel lines
That never meet
Are the threads of our lives
That never touch
Far from entangling
We’ll witness one another
By the distance of the seas
Our souls two pairs of eyes
Separated by a gulf
We may never cross
No matter the longing
For we are parallel lines
With an ocean in between
And no rowboats to be seen.

Thoughts are ticking clocks
When you listen hard enough
You’ll know every tick
From every tock
Sometimes you’ll drown them out
Other times
Oftentimes
The ticking
Swallows you up.

I wish
for you to remain soft
for the world to stop
encasing kindness
when did it become
a synonym for foolish
a weakness
I wish
for you to stop
encaging yourself
in skin so tough
But first, I wish
we did not have
a reason to toughen up.