Life insists
on patience
but once I have arrived
at a destination
how can I be content
to wait outside?
My heart falters mid-air
clips the rim of the wastebasket
and falls to the floor
with an unsettling squelch.
She will leave a stain no doubt.
But isn’t that what we all want
to leave something behind
when we are gone
and haven’t the impulse
to make anything new?
I watch her sputter and turn.
Everything hurts,
your absence,
my disenfranchised life,
even the crescents
at the ends of my fingertips
from scraping so long
at the same intractable walls.
I am afraid of my life,
afraid of my heartÂ
because even on the outside
she has a knack for drawing me in.
The butterflies in my stomach
are made of wire.
They jab and tangle.
They perforate my insides
whenever they spread
their amature wings.
I don’t want to die
voluntarily incarcerated.
I don’t want to go
another moment
without knowing you.
The road between us
has yet to intersect but still
I love knowing that you are out there
savoring and scavenging
under the same mutable vault as I.
mindlovemisery 