you sit with yourself as you always have, alone,
i sit with the complexity of my emotions, together,
letting myself feel everything in the company
of my friends, loved ones, and a self-help book.
i know what safe love feels like because of them,
and that's why i have 25 reasons to wake up and try again.
sometime's i'm alone, but not really, i can't be -
at risk of texting apologies, or writing hurtful truths.
a network of feelings too vast to hold in -
you don't want to see me unearthed.
i wish i didn't have to write about this, you know that,
i'd rather a love poem and soft reflections on trees,
and so i give you my feelings like an arborist would,
watching my friends dissolve my splinters,
cutting my rotting branches one-by-one,
reframing them into fences of growth and change.
i wish i had their way, of seeing what i can be,
instead, i feel like a lotus in a pond of **** -
shining bright pink, like my cheeks, mildly embarrassed
by my own fluid, chaotic, and unhinged sense-of-self.