Lost and Found

This again,

Sitting in my room night after night.

I like to close my eyes and imagine another person

Someone to talk to me once the lights go out and the universe expands outside my window.

Someone in here. In the stillness. With me.

Someone in my chest

Inside my ribs

Holding me from the inside.

You know that’s how I am with love

I want you inside me. I want you with me. Closer.

It’s about all I damn think about

ever since I was 11.

I’ve prayed for freedom. Blown out the candles.

Picked dandelions and closed my eyes and wished to no longer wish for another.

Still it’s always felt like there’s a missing piece.

A little glass shard lost in the great impact of puberty.

I spent my nights wandering the streets looking

at the bottom of draft beer glasses and behind the tiny buttons

of the shirts of the boys who wanted to understand me.

Why I always wanted to be somewhere else.

Then I got tired.

Older.

And I sit in my tower looking out the window for the horse bound man.

I always wanted long hair.

Always.

Answer me this?

What does it take to peacefully spend a night in my room?

In my bed?

Without feeling this great vacancy?

Where’s the part of myself that knows I’m complete?
How can I convince my heart that I’m safe even outside of your arms?

Or will it never come to that?

Will I always find someone happy to fill my glass when I’m having a hard time with the silver lining?

Perhaps I’ll meet the man that holds my heavy love

Perhaps he’ll stay with me even when I cry at night and feel alone even though he’s right next to me

Perhaps I’ll wake up in 20 years and wonder why I stopped searching.

And just became comfortable with the feeling of incompleteness.

And he’ll look at me and say – “I’m tired”.

And I’ll say, “I know”

“I know, baby.”

Or maybe I’ll go to Goa. And I’ll live on a tent on the beach.

Hot hot days and cold cold nights.

Sand and dirt under my fingernails and in my hair.

Maybe I’ll swim deep into the ocean

With the coral and the algae

And I’ll go as deep as I can until the water is like ice.

I’ll swim to where I’m most afraid

And then I’ll swim back up and crawl onto the sand like a newborn.

Maybe I’ll take off all my protection.

Peel it back layer by layer.

Everything I know.

Everything I’ve built to protect myself.

The whole damn structure – I’ll tear it down.

And face the cold. The heat. The world.

Maybe I’ll find my missing shard in a café con leche in La Coruna, Spain.

I’ll smile into the porcelain cup and wonder why I hadn’t looked here in the first place.