i am afraid, no matter how much
i dream and try
i am destined to walk the far,
beaten path alone.

they say
'everyone finds love'

but i know
that everyone around me will go on
to create lives of their own,
torn straight from a a
magazine

and i will sit, watching from the window,
unable to grow past the age of 15,
when i thought i may have loved
everyone i liked
(but really just thought they were pretty)

they, the ones i love
are destined for people
who make them happy

written into their lives, is
the one who loves them

i am happy, content
to some extent,

but
as i watch
and hear them talk
about how in love they are

the thorns of envy grow in my stomach
poking, jabbing, digging at my heart
at my mind.

i think,
i want that for myself
yet,
(i am resigned to whatever this may be)

they are happy, and i am-
content,
and so be it. 

i do not know much
about the uncertain future 

but.
i know this:

i?
i am destined to a house,
far too large for the number of people
in it
(2)

where i will live,
(or rather go through the motions of life)

with a man who, for the life of him,
can not pronounce my name.

couldn't really love you anymore
you've become my achilles heel
i won't say its a chore
to lose how i feel

but i couldn't love you anymore
when i didn't want to love myself anymore

no gestures that are grand
please understand
this is not a goodbye
my eyes are bone dry

and i suppose 'couldn't'
was really more of a 'shouldn't'
or perhaps a 'wouldn't'

in the sense that
i could love you
and do not (my choice)
i am my heart's own autocrat
it's not a sad blue
in some odd way, i rejoice

(to me, he is dear,
but myself is dearer)

it occurs to me now
that i cannot see a future
with someone i love
i can open my mind and soul to

if i tell you my deepest fears
let you in
let you know me

then there is no future here

the thought unsettles me
both the notion of not letting someone in
and the thought of letting too much
of myself slip out

it is simple, really:
i hide enough of myself to stay forever comfortable with you
(and forever a little in discomfort in my own skin)
or.
i bare myself to you
and you do the same to me
it is freeing

until it is not

until i wonder if when this air settles
and the fog clears
"will you still love me?"

and so;
nothing is freeing forever
what once starts as freedom in my own skin
has the same ending
but all the while different;
here there is;
not enough comfort to stay
but just enough discomfort to leave.

if i were to boil it down
i live in hues of light gray
blue so bright i could drown
and hints of tree green throughout the day

every so often
when the hues no longer soften
my days are thunderstruck
"am i forever out of luck?"
a sprinkle of a black cast
crowned in an orange hail forecast

after the burn of those days
there is no more frown
my life is tinted daylight and sepia
not the dark, dreary kind from the maze
but the type that makes me want to drown...
not myself of course, but my coffee, in stevia

but at last, when there is no more brown;
i live in hues of light gray
blue so bright i could drown
and hints of green throughout the day

above all things,
the heart is deceitful

a trickster,
playing its games

jack of all trades,
i will be master of none

please understand,
content in my melancholy

i am not upset,
i am merely resigned.