You’re just the kind of person
some lost adolescent would go home
and write a ****** poem about
at 2am in hasty cursive
scribbled on stained notebook paper
wrinkled from careless handling, using your being
to bring some riddle of the subconscious
into an acknowledged existence— and then
destroy the evidence, rendering it
undiscoverable to humanity—like everything else
she ever kept
too embarrassingly close to her heart, because
when she was a little girl the adults in her life
told her that there certain parts of yourself
you always kept private
that are a no-no
to show to anyone, and those
perpetually invisible parts
are covered by your swimsuit and your stoic reserve,
the eggshell guarding your psyche—that if anyone
forces themselves in with enough effort, you’ll break
all over them
and stain their sacred feet
with your messy insides that never
seem to go back in
once you’ve released them,  which will
leave you eternally wishing
to retreat into that perfect little immaculate white shell,
undisturbed by your own humanity.

I deprive myself of glances
I would love to take of you, but that would mean
that at some point you would
grow suspicious and
perhaps conjure the ESP
I seem to think everyone has
whenever I have a secret about them I’d rather
they never figure out—but I have to admit,
you’re beautiful.
I wish there were words
precise enough to explain exactly how
I just ******* love
how you stare at the world
with a poet’s wistful empathy, peeking
discreetly through the one-way mirror
of well-guarded sensitivity,
eternally wearing a gaze reluctantly masked
with an adaptive weariness just
transparent enough to expose
brief silhouetted glances
of vulnerability.

You’re just the kind of person
I wish I had the courage
to let into
my psychological fortress
constructed with every accumulated brick
of accumulated cynicism
that materializes
from living in a world that
muffles every voice
it makes want to scream, even if
no matter how old I become I’ll
always be some lonely kid standing
outside of my own person, eternally yearning
for somewhere safe enough
to have a broken shell.