I feel so many things

That when I take a moment to breathe

A moment to pause before sleep overcomes me

I cannot feel anything

I am empty.

I look on the past

It’s a flurry of cold anger

The freezing storm that lays a sheet of ice upon my forehead

To cool my thoughts

With a rustling wind carrying hate

For the people that have wronged me.

More dangerous than any heated heart rate.

With the sun beating down

On an affection I’d never felt

Before.

The love of friends and the love of men.

Twisted in anguish

Wanting so bad to know what it is to love

Without caring what is received in return.

Receiving more than nothing in return.

And casting them aside.

Losing all the answers I knew

And finding only questions

Harsh words from cruel lips of a beloved

A devotion based on wrong reasons

Mistakes with consequences gloved

I no longer know

What I want

From me.

For me.

What do I have now?

Memories.

Nothing.

Hope.

Hope is like the vine that curls its leaves upon your window

And when I look out it trembles in the wind

A pane divides me from it

Cannot be altered

Cannot be touched

Not something to gain, but something to foster

Let it grow upon my house

The blessing of green livelihood.

I look on the future

Through this window

I see the calm of greener grass and the summer sun still beating down

New love

But the wind blows here too.

The chills of fear creep over

Everything that could be.

Crystals of frozen water collect upon the window pane

And I am blind

The green evades me.

So scared.

Somehow the darkness is consoling

As I curl up somewhere

Hidden in the cupboard, under the bed, in the basement

Out of sight

The vines are squeezing through the floorboard cracks.

Can’t see them but they are there.

What have I now?

Hope.

Fear.

Hope…

Fear…

A decision not worth making

And so I have nothing.

I feel nothing.

Because I am preparing. It is the moment

I take to breathe

To pause before sleep runs off with my dreams

So let me feel nothing

So that the next emotion may swell and sweep with increasing power

Through the empty riverbed that is my present heart.