You strip me down
to my trembling core,
and hold me still
fixed in your gaze
pinned beneath your thumb
your body begs me
to forget my creeping fears,
to forget that you see things
I don't even see in myself
I'm blinded by you
and your brazen assuredness.
You don't know Doubt like I do,
you don't lay with her at night
and let her ask you her incessant questions
until you can't remember
what you really look like
to anyone but her.
Sometimes she asks me
why you're here -
did I really think I had anything I could give you?
Her questions hang over my head
a dark cloud drooping, oversaturated with
the weight of the unknown
reminding me that it could burst
at any moment, and shatter me
it threatens to take the shape of my every mistake -
why did I do that in the first place?
what kind of person does that make me, then?
And I almost crave the downpour
just so I don't have to wonder anymore
what you think or how you feel or who I am to you
so you don't hold the power to crush me
with just the ghost of a word on your lips.
But that's not how the game is played
you can never know how it ends, of course
and I can only pray
not even to win, only that
I can make it to the finish before the game breaks me.

Loosen your grip
around my heart:
my chest, now collapsing,
burns at your all-too-familiar touch.
Why do I unravel
into your arms again?
How do you fold me
into you, so deftly?
as if I had not perished here
a thousand times before?
as if I did not know,
despite your absolute claim on me,
that you would not
could not
ever be mine?
I wanted you,
not for true love,
I wanted to conquer you.
I was inspired by
fantasies of my independence
those dreams long awaited, now still
unperturbed in a *** from which
I cannot tear my eyes.
Morbid curiosity, or
fascination
masquerading as devotion
still tugs at my heart
with the warmth
and the force
of your touch.

I.
here we are again,
this lake and me
and the dazzling sky,
which is nice to look at
while I bloodlessly tread icy water.
A clear spring night here
leaves your cheeks sunkissed
and blazes like the sun itself
fractured
into a hundred million blinding particles.
So it’s to there I lift my eyes,
away from my blue-tinged limbs,
to pour illusions of warmth into the
empty space that formed
when the lake robbed the feeling from each nerve.

II.
now you press me to the edge
of the lake
you’ve flattened me, I’m
a shadow at your feet
kissing the ground you stand on.
You dangle my breath in front of me,
letting it crystalize under
your preternatural gaze
and the fragments cast rays
that scatter me and send me
skyward, to the stars.

as you hold me here,
shaking in your arms,
I’m afraid
to tell you, I’m afraid
that if you relax your grip
intentionally or accidentally,
if you let me go,
I’ll be ripped away by the wind,
never again to find
a place to rest -
if I leave your orbit, I’m afraid
I’ll go spiraling, directionless and destinationless
with only my fading memories
of you,
the way you
pin me down
and smooth me out,
absorbing my tremulous shockwaves
calmly, evenly, always
reminding my erratic lungs
of the gentle rhythm called breath.
Your decided pace makes cyclical
my erratic nature;
you breathe steadiness into the
desperate urgency that
seizes my unwilling chest.
Without even knowing,
you refine me
just by being who you are,
by occupying the space you have always held
in my past
and present
and, with every ounce of hope I have,
my future.

Something found its way
from your veins to mine,
too difficult to name
pulsing with serene desperation
that flows freely
in a perfect circle through
space and time, from
you to me to you to me to you to me to -
you get it. And the thing about perfect circles
is they have neither beginning
nor end,
and more importantly, they don’t exist.
Not in nature - well, maybe that’s not important at all. I’ve been thinking in circles
around you, how we don’t really
exist in nature anyway
unless there is some way to substantiate these thoughts pinging around in nonexistent shapes,
unless there’s a way to make them tactile, to touch them, change them in your hands -
but there isn’t. Therefore, I contend
we are supernatural, at least in some capacity,
like a heartbeat I can feel
miles away, yet still the same distance
as the arbitary space
we assign between seconds.
We do not simply exist in nature:
we think, we believe, we long, we love
on a different plane, one that supercedes nature,
one we don’t and could never
fully understand
but I like it better that way
and I belong here,
I think
so do you,
circling me circling you
perfectly, endlessly, impossibly.

Memory is not acquainted with the beginning
nor imagination with the end
of the race.
I remember how it used to feel
sprinting, endorphins surging,
nerves singing, scorning pain,
the thrill of being ahead,
never mind the
unending stretch of runners in front of me,
never mind that
nobody knows where we finish
our guide is precedence
only.
Once I felt good,
thinking only of my pride,
how good it felt to be fast
how good it felt to be moving forward
and sometimes, when I pause for an instant,
and glance behind me I
see a face or two
far in the distance,
we were once running together -
but never mind. The more I
run, the better I'm getting
my feet are lightning, thumping
quicker than my heartbeat
outrunning my lungs
almost ripping me apart.
I remember how it used to feel,
when my mind, my heart, my body moved in sync
when it once listened to me,
and did what I said
but never mind. I will just do
what I've only ever done
because it's all I can do.