in fear of love

I want to write you letters,
to buy you flowers,
to run my fingers through your hair.
I know nothing about love, but I know how to do if perfectly,
I think I would be a really good lover, I would be good at loving you.
I have a lot of thoughts and feelings from watching films and reading books.
I wish we could love each other without our bodies.
My body can't quite fit around this soul,
it is too large in some places and too small in others.
I stretch and pull like taffy but there are too many miles of skin.
I wish our souls could meet without our bodies,
so you wouldn't know the tragedy of analyzing my eyes, the glances, the motion of limbs or lack of it.
I wish you knew the buzzing ball of light and energy that is my soul, before you knew the vessels, skin, and hair that cover it.
I want to draw you over me like a blanket and whisper to the universe in the space between our souls;
and write you letters,
and buy you flowers,
and run my fingers through your hair.
I think I would be good at loving you,
but I am petrified.
Petrified of you getting too close and knowing me when I don't know myself,
of loving me when I don't even love myself.
Petrified of me lying, because it's so much easier than having to explain the hard things,
the things I don't know how to explain
except by telling you how much it hurt.
I am not broken, but I have to ask,
"could you love a broken thing?"
Intimacy is the singular thing I fear and the singular thing I crave,
that's why no one is allowed to get cloe,
I am the statue behind the glass at the mueseum with a sign warning you not to touch.
Because touch softens a person, ages them,
swallows them.
I will cross my arms and hide behind barricades of skin, play the coma girl no one can wake;
but if only you knew I could melt at your fingertips,
I am just afraid, that is all I am,
terrified that if I let you in,
you will offer to fix my shower's water pressure
and hold me with your whole body until I fall asleep;
and terrified, absolutely petrified, that I will let you.

-anna sluder



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