Feathers dance across my vision, and I want to gather them all up and store them inside of me.

Maybe they will make me float.

I think that you only care about the relationship you have with flames and desperation.

You told me once that you got so high off a blunt that you floated up into the sky and tapped danced with Jesus on a cloud.  When I inquired about his appearance, you lite a match off your shoe and nonchalantly said that he looked like the love child of Patrick Swayze and the curly haired Jonas Brother.

I hid your demons under the broken steps that you used to climb to catch the morning train, as I know that you would rather die that feel that suffocated once again. Of course, I still watch you fill your lungs with smoke, but your mother sighs and whispers that you have been improving. I choke on the air you breathe.

You are dying fast, yet this doesn't seem to bother you in the slightest, and you would rather lay in bed and watch your ceiling fan that climb out the window and see the sky. In your defense, the fan is a nice shade of blue, but the morning light is my preference.

You disappeared for a week in July and were labeled a missing person by the government. After you showed up on my doorstep half drunk and *****, I couldn't bare to tell you that I was so relieved that you were gone. I let you inside anyway, because seeing your brown puppy dog eyes makes me wish that I could save you.

I am watching you destroy yourself, and you don't even have the decency to remember my name.

I wonder how long it will take me to be whole.

You might think that this sounds odd or possibly vain, but it is a thought that torments me constantly as I am driving home in the wee hours of the morning.

I'm tired of being captured by the picture that others have of me, as I am more than a nervous disposition and a small frame.

Everyday I go through the motions, yet everyone I experience seems to see right through me. I am only a temporary splotch of paint that will be covered up on their canvas of convenience.

I finally reached my breaking point, and as I stood there with tears leaking through my closed eyes, you asked me if I was okay and at first I didn't even hear your voice.

I try to keep my emotions under control, but I have come to accept the fact that humans can only hold in so many different feelings before they explode.

You saw the small crumble of my body and mind, watched all of my colors pour out of me, and yet you stayed.

I am entirely grateful.

I wonder what it would be like to love you.

I don't think that it would be uncomfortable or forced, rather I believe that it would be revitalizing-like having finally found a glass of water after being thirsty for hours.

You once told me that in the night when you can't sleep that you put on gym shorts and walk around the streets contemplating the world. I laughed at first until I realized that I do the same thing from my bedroom, watching the light from car headlights drift in through my black curtains.

I wonder what it would be like to join you out in the brisk night, where I would reach out and grab your hand unashamed and we would just coexist together.

But sadly I am not one to dive into things head first, as I always fear the consequences of allowing others the peel back the layers of my mind.

I am scared of being destroyed by someone as human as you.

You only know what I want you to know,
as the fondness I feel for you is carefully hidden,
in the dark, small chambers of my heart.
Perhaps I have smothered my affections too much,
as you do not know how much I truly and utterly
need you in my life.

I put up a good mask, because it is easier to be someone else
than deal with the pains in my own life.
I have never allowed myself to lower my façade,
because I do not even know who I am without it.

Underneath-

I am lonely.
I am afraid.
I am needy.

I am scared of losing you.

You-

are my warmth.
are the sparkle in my eye.
are the sighs that coat my lips.

You and I will never be.

Because I am a coward.
A coward who is scared to love you.

The pieces of your time with me,
are scattered all around this cluttered room.
And now that we are distant, I somehow am unable to discover
what belonged to you
and what belongs to me.

I never thought that I would ever feel this way.
Hearing the beating of your heart as
we sit and watch movies in the dark
on a late Thursday night.

I miss the way that you looked at me.
I miss the way that your crooked smile seemed to
shine a glimmer of happiness on my face
as we would skip together down the hallway
hand and hand.

Today I woke up, and I realized
that while I thought that we had this "undying" love,
that all I really had all along,
was the closing of a book of fairy tales.
The prince decided that he was tried of trying,
and the princess did not even care.

Everything is gone.
And so am I.

She wonders who she really is.

To her parents, she is the "reliable child",
while her brother was off doing bath salts and fighting the "greater enemy",
she was at home reading books and tending to their every beckoning need,
with a smile plastered to her nimble face,
causing her features to slowly turn into a mask of perfection,
only to hide her yearning to escape,
and to taste the alcohol under the kitchen counter.

To her husband, she is the woman of his dreams,
with a graceful charm and a impeccable body,
she is the angle that awoke him from his long eternal slumber of loneliness,
and the one that is the biggest supporter of his dreams.
He never wonders if she does not love him as much as her loves her,
but the scrabble of her footsteps leaving the bedroom every-night,
are starting to weigh on his thought process.

To her work, she is the most valuable member of the team,
the one who always has the files organized by client last name in alphabetical order,
who can rattle off statistics and coffee orders as if they were the facts she learned in grade school,
and who always gives the best toasts at the yearly Christmas office party,
dressed perfectly with the smile frozen onto her face.
Little do they know, she has panic attacks in the bathroom between conference calls.

What astonishes me the most is when she needs a person to help her,
how all the people in her vicinity abruptly vanish,
and how she is able to blend in with the dark walls and floors,
and be completely out of sight.

She is the chameleon.