The love which makes me see you when I am not looking

My eyes seek for your recognition

Selfishly wishing for your joy

For my joy is only that which you feel

And yet that joy which is given to you by another burns at my scalp and scrapes at the inside of my ribs

My ears are running from the reality of what I won’t hear

towards the religion that I find in your arms

Even if they don’t hug me to you, but hold my pieces together I pray to never lose touch

The science speaks louder than the voices in my head but their whispers are incessant and they wait for the logic to pause

To crack under the weight of all that I am not to you

Of all that I find in your words that is not for my ears

but for those of the one who will hear them in my place for years to come

I step just close enough to imagine

Unfortunately, it is far too close

as it lends ammunition to misplaced hope that is violently tearing my feelings from my thoughts yet, Without ground

Without ground

It sinks deep into my lungs and is forgotten until I breathe too deeply and fills my mouth thickening my words to sludge that cannot escape my head

I tell you of the chains only once I am free of them, as a condolence to the loneliness those same chains felt being kept in the lining of my stomach and seeping into my bloodstream

Silently they poisoned the only corners of my mind I could control