I run out of breath before I even start to speak,
and intentions tumble uselessly around my tongue.
All the volumes of disappointment and shameful yearning
push up against my uvula, causing me to dry heave in a
wet pool of self-pity.

It’s not that I am pining,
I just wish it was your hand searching the short hairs
at the back of my neck. Instead it’s another lamppost,
and yet another green sign marking the way to an
increasingly unfamiliar scene.

The building sits, gutted of interior, possibilities spreading the cracks in the concrete floors and marking out frantic blue-lines on bond paper. I, like an artist shaking before a fresh canvas, fear this crumbling expanse, stripped bare of walls and columns and lamps. Lamps; one never appreciates the quality of a good lamp until you’re staring down a thought in the ravaged daylight crawling through the sullied fractures of a few lead windows.

It’s not the lack of boundaries or support or insight that frightens me. It’s all these damned possibilities, wrapping their way up the fronts of my laces, tightly cinching around my chest, and chilling the skin between my short hairs. It’s the notion that I am here to test the value of each opportunity; choose which options are worthy and which to cast aside. And then, from those twisted remains, I am to shine-up a new identity.

But, how can I teach a building posture, when I am prone to slouch? How do I show these walls to dress themselves? Or the doors to open for strangers? Or the lamps to give insight? And what is a building if its lamps don’t shine?

She’s not perfect; not even ideal, but I want to know her. I want to wrap myself up in her heat; work her through my hands until I know the curves of her elbows, and the texture of the skin at the back of her neck just behind the ears. I want to whisper into her, and watch her grow under my wind. I will give names to the flecks in her eyes, and recognize the distinctive curl of each hair; map her freckles as if they are constellations, and study their movement across seasons. Then, I will tread lightly through her garden, and lay in the soil until I am an Acacia.