the tight ball of nerves sitting in my gut
has not left
only you, everything else is white noise

of course i dreamt about then
insidious, hazy but now all i smell is
vanilla and it reminds me of a heart
twinge the way it envelops my
sense of self. the hill i would die on is
the hill i ran from, the spiral
downward familiar i
wish you would see me burn

she came to me, freezing - and
that grounded me
there, because i could not stop
dreaming
of warmth and its elusivity after
the waking. and i
was glad
for the cold, because i knew it
meant she was real, that she wasn’t
another delusion

tempt me near a decade
thought myself Circe’s swine
multiple lives bear multiple aches
to sail is to leave behind

who wants to live forever?
reincarnation, rather
she could ruin every life i’d ever live
just mere pigs on her isle

some nights
i am there, flying over words, my brain voiding out the blank worlds it skipped in its impatient race to catch another glimpse of what i saw that night, you knee deep in the water with your eyes lost beyond the horizon when you said this should be enough but it never would be

other nights i am here, crawling over words, trying to get to there.

i am selfish, hungry
yearning for what i could never need
that my ego would smother any want in the crib
because i know what i become when
stripped bare, that i lose any sense of self and become an unfaithful anagram of all the things you
love and deplore

how did  a few nights with you
turn into months of restless sleep?
you haunt my fever dreams,
in them your fingers reach into my mouth
to pull me by the teeth

how are you telling me
that your existence is weightless?
i could drag you down, the way
my own being has dragged me down for as long as i’ve misunderstood its purpose