AAST

When I fall in love it's obsession.  It's "all things go, all things go."  Just a couple days ago I thought I was slicing hearts and homes in two.  I thought, "I have to leave this before it becomes me.  And, "I have to abandon ship before I choose mutiny."  Now I feel the emotions bubbling and as much as I want to embrace it, I also know that there is a time for it and love, after all, is first of all patient.

It seems to sometimes be this time of year.  Suddenly I hear you.  Or out of nowhere I see you.  My caterpillar heart grows wings in this chrysalis called a chest.  I fly far away and hope you'll catch me in your net.  Still, somehow I know me.  Perhaps because I've been around myself more than anyone else.  Maybe because absence makes the heart grow fonder.  Whatever it is, it seems to work best one way most of the time.  I don't want that this time.  Then again, have I ever wanted it to be an exclusive one-way street?

If that's what my desire was then what of the holding?  Something inside seems to always stretch outward.  I always want to reach out.  I want the holding the happen.  I want something beyond words.  I want to show you that there is something here for you.  So here are your first words.  Here is your poetic prose.  Your poetry that is not set up to perfect timing.

You and I will sit together.  I don't have to hold anything back.  Then again, I will be patient.  "I will be patient," speak to me Head.  I want to hold you with words I want to embrace you with arms.  I have placed your name in capital letters and as I allow myself to dwell too long on it, I sense the nonfiction of feeling and the fiction of your letter postmarked to me.

Patience.

"Patience," I say.  "Perhaps if you'll just wait for many days passed yesterday, you'll find a letter postmarked to your heart.  Give me time and I'll show you, it's not all one-way.  These words feel like so much more than inked emotions.  Hold me Heart, I can't trust my emotions but I feel the warmth in your arms.

What (or Where) is love?

I needed you and I wouldn't let myself believe it.  I felt you inside me poking around and filling the holes I'd created myself.  I began to open up to you.  I felt the darkness disappear.  I didn't know you were picking at my scars to heal me where we were until I told you enough to push you away.  I pushed you away just in time to not know enough about what I was leaving behind.

...

It's been long enough.  Hasn't it?


You barely even know me.  I fall fast but I'd so much rather do so than stay buried beneath these dead leaves.  The shards of broken hearts create small slivers but sometimes the smallest wounds hurt the most.  Can I tell you anything?  Can we even just communicate?  Is infatuation okay here?  I'd like to escape this lonely togetherness.  What are you looking for?


And everyone else: you don't know me anymore.  I have opinions.  I have ears in high places.  My heart lays low among the brush and rubs sticks together that only create forest fires burning homes and habitats in their way.  I'm a disappearing mosaic of atoms descended from Adam.  Do you read poems like an almanac?  Do you force-feed your seed the secondhand stories you've heard?  Do you verify your sources before you pass along the chismes?

Why does this always happen to me?  Here?