There are days
my chest burns
with a thousand unnamed feelings,
and I swear,
if I don’t find a place to put them,
I’ll split open
from the inside.

I romanticize everything—
the way light moves through a curtain,
the way someone laughs
without knowing I’m listening—
and it wrecks me.

I carry every goodbye like a funeral.
I fall in love with strangers
for no reason
but the way they exist.

The world wants me dull.
Wants me quiet,
contained.
But I’m all crescendo—
too loud,
too tender,
too much.

And oh,
where—
oh, where
to pour all this softness,
when no one knows how to hold it.