Tingling Sensations

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.