aftermath

i cannot speak.
i cannot mouth
                            the words
cannot fit to you now,
or me,
          after
the mean face of sleep,
when a fierce slap of daylight
fights back the echoes of the night.
i cannot rest.
you cannot know,
but when you come in here,
to hear you is to dream,
drums that beat a heart to fright,
the bate to catch a mouth to choke,
to squeeze around a bruised throat,
to tighten breath to stop a chest.
you must go.
i cannot keep it in.
i cannot be
                  where
                            i want to be.
i cannot want you
                            to wear yourself down.
i must wear another face.
you cannot see me
                              like this.
i cannot look at you,
not knowing when the sudden flash of
arms feet flying past too fast
twisting, flaying, body braced, colour streams,
gone.
i cannot feel.
you cannot know
the numbness down here.
i cannot move.
you can.
your little movements, jigsaw fitting
with everyone else's little movements.
i cannot make
                       sense
                                 of you all.
you can make,
you cannot leave me
                                like this.
leave me alone.

beats and feet

the high-pitched drift-haze falls to slumber.
you didn't know you could try so hard so long,
only to find that this was the blunder.
this was the trap that held you snared,
that kept you small and scared
of doing something terribly wrong,
of losing your place in other people's hearts,
as if that's all you centered around,
your own beats made of other hearts' sounds,
your own feet on other people's ground.

you didn't know, but how could you,
when you went through what you went through,
when trying hard was all you knew,
the only way to navigate
the steps and stones, the steeplechase,
where love was both dangerous and safe.

you didn't know that if you stopped,
your beats would grow far up and wide,
would reach through air and ocean's tide,
where waves are only surface breaks
in what the eye can't penetrate,
where skin bleeds into fins and wings
that swoop and soar
without the need for conscious thought,
where feet stretch miles underground,
where a single breath is all you need
to take you back to unity.

you didn't know, and that's okay.
and tomorrow you'll be trying again,
trying to get the buzz, the fix,
of someone else's beats and feet,
and when you do, that's okay too.
remember, it's an old part of you.