I picture you fast asleep when I’m lying
here wide awake
and the hours hang on with their fingertips
until the doubt is buried in my skin like dust.
Your words are whirring insects
and they’re nesting in my brain
breeding half-hearted hopes
and bleeding organic engine smoke
because I can’t think
when you’re inside my head like you’re a piece of me
and I know I’m contradicting myself
because you’re everything but not enough
the perfect stranger and my one true love
and all I really want
is for you to look at me
until I become someone else
because maybe then none of this would matter
we could talk with time
and change our minds
instead of treading salty water
and clutching the miles between us like shields
until our mouths are dry and our hearts are heavy
with all the things we aren’t allowed to say.
Please just hold me
until I break apart
as I watch another clock on yet another day,
feeling different but somehow exactly the same
and I’ll tear these words out of your chest
like I’m entitled to all of you when I have nothing else left.
It’s ironic that I love you more when I try to walk away,
and it’s a shame that I can’t have you any other way
because you’re summer rain in the middle of May
and no matter how hard I try to find you inside my head
with logic and reason and chain reactions
these chemicals keep colliding
and we just keep slipping and sliding
with eager uncertainty down this tangled network of neurons
until I can’t see where you end and where I begin
and I don’t even want to try.