i am neon

every step you take from me i watch my dreams quietly retreat i didn’t know i was this lonely until i saw you looking right at me and i’m trying so hard to make my peace over and over, burying bodies until i run out of yard forgiving people until i run out of heart and i wish i didn’t get carried away imagining myself anywhere else but in my bedroom afraid of the windows and i know others have left and i know others will leave and i know i need to let the stream flow right through me but wanting more is a disease dreaming of what isn’t mine is an execution and i want to ask my Lord that if i was meant to be alone did i really have to live so very long?

you terrify me with the things you say. how you’ve finally found your other half and i could keep you awake for days and it’s like my tongue found a way down my own throat because the way i feel i can’t say out loud i can’t say how when you told me how i never look you in the eye i almost threw up my heart on a dinner plate i almost forget my ribs were still there and you can’t read my mind you can’t hear the breath i’ve been holding you can’t feel the clenching inside when i allow myself to wish how badly you were mine

don’t ask me how i feel because there’s no lie that comes naturally there’s nothing i can say instead of the aching i have to hold your face how i’ve been waiting weeks to hear my own name and if i was who i used to be then you’d already know you’d know because i would have made you mine in every way i know how you’d know what the thought of your skin does to me that i can’t even stand the air between us much less all these clothes how the only talking i want to do with you is when we come up for air but the person i’ve become she can’t say a single word because if you’re only mine since i touched you then you never really were if you fall in love when i kiss you then you don’t love me after all

i eat my berries and i drink my tea i take my vitamins and get enough sleep and everyday i’m biting down on something i can’t break everyday the bile is an aftertaste every dream i left in the morning wears that smile on your face every secret i couldn’t keep forgives me because i’ll take this one to the grave every desire i hunted down watches how i run away and i know it’s unlike me but i’ve never wanted something so grand that could make me so small so rare that i’m afraid to plead my destiny so sweet that imagining the taste is almost enough for me

don’t you know that i’m yours? devoted like my whole life was a train station waiting for you to arrive i wish that god could have given me a sign i wish i had seen you in a dream decades before because i would have spent all the years laying the table planting the fruit such sweet relief to leave all the pain where i found it such conviction in no one ever taking your place because if anyone had ever traced the lines on my palm and told me your name the next time these hands would be held is when i am entirely yours to claim

you don’t know how i count the days. that i’ve been bracing myself to lose you before i ever had you at all that nothing could ever make more sense to me than watching you walk away because god knows i’ve been taught what i do and do not deserve and the way that you look at me is one gift i could never earn. only you know how well begging becomes me but it’s okay i promise it’s okay i know it is because i’ve been grieving you since the day we met and darling, i have a lifetime to discover how to do it best

i realized two things the day i met you: that you were created to be loved and that i was only fashioned out of clay and dust to be someone who loves

my heart twists into origami when i look at you skipping pebbles in my tummy because i’ll never be your only audience there’s pretty heads everywhere you go you turn them all like rotary phones and maybe i’m the lucky fool the whole world is my blind spot when you’re my entire view