Cold hands warm heart they say.
Always clutching cold hands on warm nights;
being together yet feeling alone;
aroused, stimulated, distracted, absent-minded,
lost, perplexed,
all at the same time as focused,
like steel blades and the precision of knives.
You know what this is.
But you can’t ever outrun its fingers.
Can’t pull your throat out from under a choking hold.

Hiding is like allowing the wolf to catch your scent;
fighting is like battling a wave;
accepting is like russian roulette.
Are you daring enough to play?

‘Why are you crying over that?’
People said to me
in scolding tones and glacier eyes.

I can’t be this vulnerable; it’s spiky
and stinging and
rolling over hurdles backward.
Condense, squeeze it down so
you don’t have to swallow too hard.

Emotional vulnerability is feeling all those
spikes of emotions, all those acute,
mount everest’s climbed without warm clothes
allowing them to hit you full in the face,
being driven under the pull of a wave.

We feel these rides of our lives,
micro moments in days of episodes.
There is nothing like intimacy to completely throw you
off everything;
the superficial cover to fill out the empty spot.

We roll onwards in our spirals;
our cycles and roundabouts of fear and self-pity;
contempt follows us whilst
dusty, aged hope drives us.
I know my triggers.
I know the cycle I feed, I bleed into,
I run chased by myself,
branching into more cycles,
looping on each other in
disgusting order;
concentric whirls,
at alarming speed,
facing walled obstacles,
tackling nightmares hands bound up
waiting to see if someone can pull you up and out
or make you draw
the ugly patterns
of your own mind games
out in circles, broken lines
and scratches.

I was emotionally abandoned.
In a realm of angry, biting storms and
numbing head spins.
Knocked around by severe internal seasons,
wearing sweaters under hot sun,
or drowning in half-shirts under icy rain,
I can keep it away.
Don’t look.
Suppress.
Bite down on something hard
before you scream.

And then they burst in bright beautiful sparks;
feeling swept in delicious tastes,
explosive episodes,
rapturous warmth and synchronised heartbeats.
Painful glows and inspiring tornadoes;
destruction and recreation,
a chaotic peace and warm sweats,
stinging burns and hot tears
mixed with not-so-equal parts
of silken nights and glorious
wakeful dreaming.

'Of course you may hurt, of course you may cry.
Of course you can sing and laugh and ache, anything
you want to try.'

And this is why we feel.
Why we need to feel.
Why we love the slow smoulder of being caught up.
Caught up in emotions and their separate rides;
shifting speeds and tracks each new time
they crawl to our surface again.
Holding back is wasting precious passions;
it’s exhaustion you crave when everything else is
flat, blank, rigorous rigid routine and ripping open
empty boxes.

So you say I always have cold hands.
Cold hands warm heart they say.
This is the reason I love you.
This is the reason I wait for you,
to realise you love me too.
This is the reason I can only
hope
you make the right choice.
Not for me, for them, for anyone.
For you.
I don’t have a say anymore.
I never did.
I can’t speak, or help, or keep you warm anymore.
I can’t be your escapism.
I can’t be crack, dope, speed or any of your illicit nonsense.
I can’t be your forbidden fruit
in your late night feast;
creeping around, undercover lover,
giving you pleasure and happiness and smiles
locked under secrets and
silent words.
I’ll seethe and brood
underneath you, caged in the dark
shadow of your body
dreaming up it’s presence before I fall to sleep.

Cold hands warm heart they say.
Fuel my fire.
Keep my hands cold.