I am slowly *******
Last night I took out my metal
For I could not stand the weight
During years now
Am I washing off smeared make-up from my face
I think it's beginning to show my skin
Sometimes I speak and the echo brings my own voice back to me
It sounds so much calmer than I remembered
My hair has been growing back its color
It tickles on my shoulders

I'm getting there
It's terribly slow and difficult
But I think I'm finding myself

I'm on a strike
I refuse
To spend the rest of autumn
Pretending to be whole without you
And I swear
I will not leave this bed
Until I wake up and find you in it

I close my eyes before
Waking up in your arms
Just to fall back asleep
And start living

You undress me
In the slowest silence
With the greatest care
Your hands keep asking permission
To the skin that is to be revealed

You hear me
Not by the words that escape from my mouth
But by the pauses in between them
By the tones and the rythms
By the ones I never say

You see me
Uncertainly coming onto you
And you patiently assure me
You're not going anywhere
That it's gonna be worth the risk

And I have never loved
Or been loved by anything
This carefully

I imagine you running through your days
Laying your kitchen supplies on a piece of paper before you cook your salmon
Making a row of all your jars and then taking one vitamine pill from each

I can see you laying down in your bed
With my shirt and our monkey patiently waiting on my side of it
And I know you will think of me
But does it ache inside of your flesh the way it does for me?
Did the world lose half of its color the day I left?

I guess I'm afraid that one of these days
You will be lining up your loved once
And forget about counting me in

I tried shaving you off of me today
Without a clue who I was trying to kid
I thought that maybe if I could rinse you from my body, I might be able to silence your absense.

You see,
I hate you for loving me the way you do
With all your patience and your ease
I hate you for handeling everything better than me
And that I am always the one begging not to hang up the phone
I hate you for not leaving me
Because slowly you are forcing me into
The scariest part of my life
Of trusting you that you'll stay
And I will never survive that fall

I spend most of my dreams now
Covering the miles between us
Out of this apartment
Which is too big to fit your absence in
Away from this city
Through the droughts of this land
Over powdered mountain tops
Along coastlines
Across borders
Right into vineyards and vast meadows
Past forests and their lakes
Crossing city after city
Untill I find myself in yours
Over bridges
Into that street
The stairs up
The hall in
Until I finally rest my hand on that doorknob
And feel you just before I wake