i do want to be soft.
i do want to be in
the cotton threads of tenderness. i want
to feel the scratch of passion’s denim on my own
as if we were carefully welded
into each other’s embrace.
the troubles disappear with each blow
of blue and orange.
allow some room for error, the imperfections
are what i crave yet am too scared to have.
i’m sick of typing,
sick of pen and paper,
sick of drawing sticks and circle and artificial
happiness. i used to be able
to smell the brisk cold of the setting sun and taste
the dew of the perspiring grass the next morning.
sweat stains, tattered collars, remnants of my motivation.
i need more time to get love back.
i tell myself never cease, never drop
off that jagged cliff into nothingness. i want to bury
my hips far from the nothingness,
nuzzle my bangs into the arms of
infinity,
but i am stained with murky markers of my past
that are filled with spirits of those who have given up,
surrendered to the toils of the rocky precipice
of each morning’s awakening. i want to wash
myself free from them.
but I’m stuck
in a tightly sealed baggy of muddy suffocation,
can’t breathe, can’t feel anything but
the mud that squeezes its way
inch by inch
between my toes and drags me down further.
do i continue to choke on bits of air.
i’ll surely suffocate on the browns and drown
in the blacks. the night falls
on me in a crash
of numbing sensations. i sink
further down, bubbles from my gasping
breath float higher,
higher than i ever did.
i type
my desires into my imagination. tap.
tap. too much space
to fill in. i want to fix the gaps. turn imaginary into real.
be brave but steady
cower at nothing
befriend rum and whiskey and vulnerability
a wearer of smiles and laughter.
bid adieu to letters of self doubt,
fragments of self-hate, and second
guesses.
