Sometimes, when you are away
I can feel myself shrinking inside.
I don't want it to happen.
I don't like it, or what it means about me.
But it continues anyway.
It's this.... feeling.
Like a flower languishing in a dark closet.
And I hate it.
I don't want to write about it.
I don't want to think about it.
I just want to go to sleep
And only wake up when you're back.
And how useful is that?
But today I slept
18 hours
And I wish I was
Asleep again
And this is why I am hard to love.
I know you being away is not the only reason I feel like this.
I know I feel like this
Because my brain is full of chemicals
Making connections
Which my mind tries to explain.
But on days like this
Days like this that stretch into weeks like this
(Please, not months?)
I reach for you and I wither inside when you are far away
Busy
Distracted
Out
Gone.
Sometimes when you're back
It feels like you're still not
Back.
And so I don't push anymore, on days like this.
But I'm the same person who cried over Skype to you
At Christmastime
Because I needed you to reassure me that you loved me.
It has been so long
And you will get tired of it
And I will still need it.
I still need it.
I still need you.
On days like this I don't tell you anymore
Because you're always so busy
And because I can never tell,
So far away,
If you are going through the motions of loving me.
I let you stay away without telling you it hurts because it would hurt more if you pretended to be here
And maybe that's how it would be, you know?
Maybe you'd be calling it in, talking to me because I begged you to.
And there's never a good time to fall apart on you.
There's never a good time to say that for months I've been feeling sadder and sadder, feeling you slip away because
You feel secure
But you have to know, someday I have to tell you
I don't know what safe means.
And I'm always afraid. It will take
So many years
For me not to be afraid.
And it's not your fault
And it's so much to ask,
But I need you to be here.
And I just...
I wither
When you're not.