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

i’ve had them, resting their heads on my chest
listening
listening
listening
to the same ******* beat that my doctor tells me isn’t right, and they think it’s for them.

she slowed it down so well some nights i felt weightless, every ba-thump a microsecond offbeat, my entire being syncopated -


flit.

sometimes she forgets, and
she wakes me up by touch - i hate those
late nights, because i am robbed
then of hypnopompic tranquility.

most days i wonder what it’s
like, having zero obligations -
i dozed off in the surf, painted neon blue
by some nearby coral beast’s castoffs.
it wasn’t dawn i was waiting for,
but just the tide rising high enough
to submerge me completely -
my lovely wicked moon its accomplice.

tell me about the sadness you have squirrelled away. the one that threatens to show itself in every smile your eyes don’t quite follow. the one you nurture secretly, feeding it with short bursts of self-pity that no one’s ever privy to. your little guilty pleasure - because you cannot feel anything else, so this will have to do.

maybe i read more into it than i should have.

i doubted it most nights, but every once in a while you’d look at me that way and smile -

and all i ever wanted was someone to look at me that way, and smile.

its maddening.
trying to force the words, any words! out.
god ive never met anyone more deserving.
even still, anything i write? i doubt.