Is it any wonder that my tongue is stolen

Across from you in this sustained darkness

A shudder running through me as I squirm

I am reaching my hands inside

Scouring the road to find the words

I am pulling them up through a rocky pass

Only for the rope at the top to snap

My words are stolen from me by our past

I am ill at ease in your quiet comfort

Sewn you easiness like patches in a quilt

I am begging to find a voice to raise

One louder than the wishes swirling below

Straining to hear above the ringing in my ears

I excuse myself; I am home, sitting in my bed

Wondering what it feels like to know how to Ask

We are nauseous at the thought that someone will see

We are closer to ruin than to winning at all

We are closer to death than living at all

We are closer to strangers than family at all

We were born islands away, universes apart

I will bury you unknown, history stolen in the night

Your death robs you of sight you never saw at all

Love perishes in isolation

It withers between words we use to hide who we are

Love shrivels and burns away as cold as the barrier we build

Love is a promise and a curse; it is a baton I walk from

Love is a castle I built to be blown over

Love is the saddest phrase I have ever known

I have never known an ache like I have known love

I have never known silence as loud as our love

I have never known what they mean when they say:

All you need is love

Hey, do you ever wonder why your house is never a home?

There is an echoing wall
A collection of lost and found

A presence so heavy
It comes all at once and all around

When a conversation becomes a current,
An electricity, a capsule to transport freely
Through a looking glass to see
That small shy little girl, that little me

Not knowing why there was a chance
She’d be left behind at a dance
By a strong man, but no ability to cope
With a roomful of people, one absent of smoke
No liquor, no drink,
Is there even time to think?
Sights set on the door
Feet flying across that floor
And there I stood
Growing like wood
Into the floor below when every dad
Would ask me for a chance to dance

But I took up no space
I cheered and I clapped
I learned that a timer goes off
And instinct demands
Abandon ship
You can’t care how it ends

So I learned to run too
When things got hard
And the root cause barred
From my knowledge
And from your heart

I just wanted to know
I could say what I felt
And you would answer,
“I see, I will try to cope”

Because I do not need you by my side
I do not need you every day
I just need for you to stay
And tell me, “I’ll be glad to see you another day.”

Because when they built me
Brick by brick, mortarless
It was to weather more
And receive much less
But still I feel unendingly raw
When I can see underneath the underneath
That suddenness and confusion
This chaos that feels a lot like home
It takes me back to that place
Where I was small and I was shy
But still I had to try
To tell all the other men
“It is fine, my mom will come in the end.”

I have lived in a fantasy
Of stories far and wide
Of every character I could try
And knowing it was fantasy
Could not save me from the fate
Of choosing people who cannot stay
Not for a moment, not to be kind
Just “I’ll see you some other time.”
But time never comes, it passes on by
It drinks us up like slurpee in a cup
And all I ever wanted was to know:
I am important and I am enough
For someone to stay so I don’t have to be so tough
Because I am tired of filling the space
A space so vacant, so absent of heart
A space so lonely, vocabulary cloaking
With a breath perhaps, I will discard
That inherent need turn within
To leave that space so open
It allows the riff raff to slip in

Because I am enough and I am tough
I know now, I can handle when it’s rough
But who will sit with me
And pour me some tea
To sit in silence and appreciate
That relaxation will truly sate
Because I am enough and I am so tough
I can let go now and feel all this stuff
Those currents that echoed body and soul
Those voices that told me, “I am not whole”
Because all that I am and all that I’ve been
Is carried around with me in a bin
But I am ready to turn it in
And open up to what’s within
To face the stitching unbroken
A heart patched up, but the ultimate token
To be cherished and to be loved
Not just a toy on which to be tugged
I do not need you
I do not want you
But I could hear you
Hear that heart which beats below
Everything you think you need to stow
Because the most tragic thing is this
I will not know you, it’s a chance we’ll miss
Because we are all so afraid to sit
In our pain and in our pits
Of despair so lonely we shout out
And hear the echoes all around
Of everyone who came before
And transported us right back
To before we knew we were more
More than enough, more than our stuff
More than our pain and more than our bluffs
We are more than enough
But when will we finally open up

Because if we don’t
We’ll only be haunted
By echoes and ghosts
Of all who could not cope
Of all who knew that they were more
And finally, I am unmoored from this floor

A/N: Do you ever catch yourself in old habits and finally know what should change? I know that I think a lot about how connected everything is but I would never call it overthinking because it’s the right amount of thinking to take me to where I need to go next.