handfuls of air

Sometimes I forget.

I try to pretend that I want

the cold noisy outside world.

I try to conform to its contours,

warp with the others,

squeeze myself into schedules.

Obligations, acquaintances abound.

For my health, for my future,

to be painfully normal.

But faces become hollow, voices drone,

and I glimpse the sparkle of you

in a book, in a breeze, in a silence.

I submerge and you pull me down

into the warm and I want you:

peace beneath the face of things.

I crave the weight of you crushing soft

like the breast of a mother,

feeding, whispering, opening a home

away from the sandpaper people.

Stay with me, please.

Don't spit me out.

Don't abandon me here

with them.