I send loved ones this link,

volumes of poetry,

excerpts of novels I can’t commit to completing.

To them, I surrender everything I’m too coward to realize elsewhere.

 

They do not know how intimate it is for me to share.

My poor patchwork of phrases is the best I can offer this world,

the rawest roar of myself.

 

They don’t know the neglect I feel when it goes unread,

when my text gathers dust and falls into the well-intended never-done.

 

I don’t feel loneliest when I’m alone.

Lonely arrives in the aftermath of unshared intimacy,

in overestimating connection,

Allowing myself to hope dangerously

in the direction of you.

 

And I know

they’re just words to you.

The difference is,

you put emphasis on syllables,

I place it on meaning.

 

Don’t worry,

My words have been written in invisible ink before,

known past lives as silent screaming symphonies without a future concert hall.

I wonder if what I regard as diamonds in the rough

are little more than pedestrian pennies at the whim of foot traffic.

Perhaps that’s why my words and thoughts and feelings are always passed by.

 

 

 

I don’t write for you

or them

or even because I want to.

Writing and sharing it

is a need.

To see myself, I write,

And therefore, to love me, you have to read me.