At a fingertip’s distance, between you and me,
I met you somewhere upon this vast, turning globe.
With your bewitching gaze — I swear, I am in love.
But no, let it be, if your heart knows no bounds.
Come, meet me in the hub of my soul, where I dwell,
And see why I write, why I live, and why I long to be eternal.

Hey. I’ve noticed you, like a mouse slipping quietly into the apartment of my mind, finding even the smallest, most hidden corners. I’m okay. Not the heavy kind of fine, just…managing. I’m learning, trying to be better, to ease off the obsession unless the moment truly calls for it, to hold my questions unless the air feels open. The days blur, but I’m still moving forward. The thing is, I know you could say something better, but instead, you say nothing at all. I’m keeping busy, making friends, trying to push thoughts of you to the edges of my mind. My name’s Jay. Nice to meet you, I guess. It feels like you’re always right there, close, but just beyond reach. I’ve missed you. But I can’t be the one to reach out again, not after all the times I already have. So I’ll wait. Maybe contact will never reconnect. Maybe this is where our story ends.

I cannot love you but I do.  

I cannot hold you or feel you under my fingertips  

I cannot run my hand from your shoulder down your arm,  
slip my fingers into yours and clasp hands  

I cannot quench my lips with yours  
or taste you on my tongue  

I cannot feel your warmth under the sheets on winter nights  
or the cool of your breath on my neck in summer  

I cannot see you in the morning, hair tousled and sleep in your eyes  
or when you walk around the house so casually  
scant, pretending you don't know that it drives me wild  

I cannot find my world in you at the end of the day  
or quicken my heart when I hear your keys in the door  

I cannot wipe your tears or hold you when the world is broken  

I cannot share the joy and sadness in us both, as one  
who understands the scars on your arms and  
on your soul  

I cannot call your name in passion  
or for comfort in the middle of the night  
or see the promise in your eyes as the syllables tumble over my lips

I cannot hear your voice with its bubbly and sultry intonations  
whispering songs and secrets to me  
or get lost in it's sound for hours  

I cannot love you in my arms,  
So I will love you in poems and memories and dreams  
and sing a song for you in the silence

I hear both your words and the unspoken thoughts behind them.
I hear the whispers of judgment that fall between the cracks in the floor and are felt from the other end of the telephone.
While I don't need your acceptance, it's still hard to accept that, as your daughter, you still don't see me.
What you focus on is what I lack in your eyes, and all that needs to be "fixed."
I am so much more than my shortcomings, and I deserve love and respect, even as an imperfect being.
I realize that now.
Yet, after all these years, your judgment still stings, and my heart continues to ache with the pain it brings.
So, I love you from a distance, so that I can safeguard my heart, so that I can remain whole.
I refuse to dwell among those who seek to undermine me.
I have won too many wars to fight another battle with myself.

-Rhia Clay

The thought of you lingers in my skin
Shivers tracing the contours of my bones
Born is the love I bear for you,
A pressure shift pressing softly over my mind

My worries offloaded, slip quietly away,
Leaving only the ecstasy you stir in me
Rooted deeply, in marrow and muscle
You’ve touched my mind, body, and soul

Electrified, I become yours every time
Thoughts of you betray my composure,
Ruined by the thought and  image of our bodies intertwined
I am flushed with desire, aching for your presence,

To be held once more in your rugged embrace
When we are apart, butterflies swarm through me
A rippling, radiant shockwave from ***** to *****
Reminding me that I am yours.

Through struggle of love, with family we are.
Sweet kisses and hugs, he became my whole heart.
To our struggles we prayed would end
landlords, debt, our losses and then
Tonight again, we held close, closer and far.
Tomorrow I'll see him
My husband
My heart.

You're growing tired of me.
I can feel it in the spaces where your silence has started to settle.
I feel it in every breath you don't take around me anymore,
I feel it with how every laugh feels further away than it used to.
You don’t say it outright, but I see it in the way your eyes move past mine,
like I'm something you’ve already looked at too long
and you’re just trying to be polite.


I loved you so hard I still can’t sleep.
My mind keeps pulling your name apart and folding it back into maybes and ifs,
and I replay it all, the quiet moments, the almosts, everything
until I start to think they mean more than they should.
You should know I never stopped loving you, not even for a second.
But I don’t think you’ve figured that out
or maybe you have,
and you’ve just stopped loving me.
The thought of that sits heavy in my stomach, like a second heartbeat.
Some nights I start thinking up versions of myself that might’ve been easier to love
ones who don’t wear their sadness so visibly and so meanly,
ones who wouldn’t make you feel like staying is a chore.


You're growing tired
of all the things I won’t say out loud,
the feelings I edit out of every sentence
because I’m scared of tipping the balance
between “close friend” and “too much.”
So I swallow the aches before they rise,
tie my thoughts into neat little knots
so you don’t see how messy it really gets.
How messy I really am.


Sometimes I think about telling you everything
you are the only person who’s ever made me feel like I can, but I still can’t.
It’s all too tangled.
I want to know how it feels to sit beside you and want nothing
except to be held like I mean something
held like maybe I mean as much to you as you do to me.
Yet I stay quiet, again, like I always do,
because if I spill it…
won’t it drown you too?  


I miss our hugs, where in that moment our souls blurred together.
I miss our cuddles on the couch, where everything felt right, felt safe.
I miss how being near you made the hurting stop, even just for a little while.
But now it’s been so long.
All I have left is the ghost of your warmth,
And now, your touch feels too heavy,
like something I’m not sure I can carry,
cold in a way that makes everything feel distant.
like your warmth has faded into something unfamiliar.
It’s not that I don’t want you


I do.
But this isn’t you.