it has come to me that i have never truly known anyone.

speech comes through filters,
through carefully constructed creative collisions
and decisions on what words we should allow to
spill through those iron gates we call
lips.

the people i think i know the best -
the boy with crooked glasses who i can burst my heart upon
and trust him to bear the darkness with a cheery grin;
the man with a crooked bow tie who allows me to critique his jokes
as if they were works of art;
the person behind the stained computer screen i now work at
who takes in my streams of consciousness with a mind that
reads painlessly into them but will never quite understand -
are not the people that i know best.

those people are the ones typing at screens like mine;
those whom i have never spoken to and most likely never will;
those who look out at sunsets like the one i see through the library window and think,
'why can't i paint that with words?';
those who understand that words aren't a gateway to a person -
they are a rabbit-hole that hurries you down through analysis and
worry and
mistakes
into

cold hard truth.

and i realise as i sit here -
a battered blue folder and curling textbook piled next to my computer canvas,
a blue backpack deflated on the floor next to me,
freezing from lack of heating and lack of person -
that i do not know anyone better than

you.