the quiet terrors of being alive

let's admit without apologies,
the things we do to each other
the ones that never feel right
yet we're still doing them-
living in our worst parts
like spending half an hour
bumping into each and every reflection
in a five minute mirror maze
and realizing how small our hands and knees look

I want to tell you this story without
saying anything
if one day the tiles and street concrete
collapsed on my feet
and I fell through a hole in the ground,
I would keep falling.
when I reach the bottom,
if I do,
and I have,
the irony of the pain would be numbing
and the cold would feel like a red hot iron pan
against my face
I would have clawed my way up to the light
and turned my face frightened blue shielding my eyes
slowly stopping the ache
from the blinding Sun
maybe one day I'll wake up
with my shoes on the foot of the bed
and light streaming through the seams on my chest,
no longer weary that there is no other version
of this story than this
where I swallow your heart and it crawls back out of my throat

I am saying your name now
I try, I do
like animal nitrate on a Saturday night
your name like the shape of a cigarette,
a model in a magazine, the small rippling wave
of a kayak oar kissing the sea
I'm saying your name now like the things I invent
when I'm scared and want to be rescued
and in between the letters; it's always the same,
a boy in a blue wool knitted sweatshirt,
a girl singing simple songs of love and the tug
between her everlasting past and her present.
I'm sorry about the tears in your eyes
I wish they were mine
if the dead could see us, they would say your name louder
than I ever could
like a slap of gushing on the hull of a rocking boat
and I'm merely riding the tide
balanced on the biggest wave