It is hard to be quiet.
It is hard to feel the
parts that must be felt
when wanting is louder.
To want the heavy weight
of your wanting, to want
skin in the game, to want
skin at all, to touch you,
almost approaches a
forbidden blessed thought.

Do I only want change?
From you? Are you absence?
From me? Absence by proxy?
I only wish for you
and your yawning wide gap
to envelop me wholly,
to feel breath on my nose,
to put hands through thin hair,
to exchange wry glances,
to accept these changes—

but I hang loneliness
on you like rain-drenched clothes
and expect you to smile.
My loneliness is here
with or without your gaze,
it is mine to bear and love.
It is the stolen ring
never given, it is
future unrealized,
it is the part that is

felt when want is absent.