I do not want you.
Not the feel of your skin on mine.
Not the presence of your voice
subverting my thoughts through whispers.

No.
I do not want you.
I need you.

Like breath after drowning,
like the ache before a scream—
I need the lilt of your voice
to sing in my ear,
to soothe the places
I didn’t know were burning.

Like the sun chasing away the remnants of rain,
or autumn cooling the blaze of summer.
Your arrival is a balm to my soul.

I do not want you.
Not the gleam in your eye,
nor the curve of your smile,
not the weight of your gaze
when the room goes quiet.

No.
I need you—
like a pulse beneath my skin,
like truth I cannot unknow.

on foot a dullness follows
closely behind my life
deceives me to loneliness

these well-worn eyes
thick with mercury
taffetas dark air

though I’ve known your art
which is not the same
as a person

it helps me by being
constructs like a person
echoes of an old house

A found poem. Source text: The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus (below)

Not like the wretched refuse commanding our land, 

conquering for fame and pomp, send a woman.

Her name—

Mother of Ancient Land Tempest-tossed.

Send a brazen, 

yearning, 

mighty mother 

of a woman,

her imprisoned lightning breathing free, 

to lift our lamp in welcome 

to the exile, the poor, the tired. 

Her lips shall give our silenced stories to the world.

In the morning,
I promise to give myself
grace: drink water,
eat subsistence, read,
pray, wait until a bird sings
a song that doesn’t make me cry

Now, it is hard to not understand
that I am loved, & I’m sorry
I went so long believing otherwise

Sunday mornings are empty now
in chasing adulthood, in growing older
in every intonation, I wonder
    what it would be like to open my mouth
and sing praise too
    how the holy spirit would finally fill
my body like breath
    when I would finally face my childlike faith

because it didn’t take long
for the pastor to say that god planned for the devil
to take me in my sorrow

between the pews, sermon echoing off the walls
if I was quiet, I could fill Sundays again
    

Only a heart like mine could understand a polarity like this:
deprivation and then excess, the ritual of it, a rhythm to sink
my life into, accustomed to wanting and hating the need.
The flood of sodium, potassium, other such careful levels in blood
all shift as I try delicately to balance routine catastrophic damage.
I try, pushing brute force to be delicate. Catastrophic it remains.
My grin becomes caustic. The public is unnerved when I’m honest.
I drink salt in my water. I’d lick the rivulets of crystals that run
from my cheeks and pool at the hollows of my collarbones
if they didn’t make me glitter so nicely in this harsh kitchen light.
The thought that this would kill anyone else echoes weightlessly.
I’m not prone to dying. Only a heart like mine could be so incessant.

I check a favorite social media app before bed

to find it unusually overwhelming.

I am struck by an endless parade

of horrifying news stories.

Everything feels

unreal and too real.

I spend the next day

trying to gain back my filter,

the one that keeps me from seeing

so much of what is happening in the world,

that blocks out all the clutter in the house,

that adds shades of gray to the bright white

and oppressing darkness.

I ground myself in unmindfulness.

I need layers between the world and me.

I like my glasses dirty

so I don’t see everything too clearly.

I need my illusions.

I am a broken magician

trapped in reality.

What would it be like
to give it all away? 
Blow up this life of comfort? 
Empty the bank account. 
Stop paying the bills.   

Get rid of everything
except what might
fit on my body
and in a wheeled suitcase.   

Get cold,
and not know
where my next warmth
might be coming from.   

Get hungry. 
Like, actually hungry; 
not that soft
science experiment
of hunger I call fasting.   

What would it be like
to be stripped
of all this common luxury? 
To feel the glory
of temperature control,
the nourishment of food. 
So that I might be reminded
of how exquisite this modern life is. 
Because I sure as hell keep missing it.