A Nameless Feeling

I hold a nameless feeling in me.

Like sorrow mixed with hope mixed with the potential for so much power that my heart’s a water balloon nearly bursting.

Or a watermelon detonating at the mere caress of a bumblebee.

These veins, trembling as a gnat’s wing, crave to carve the arc of a hurricane into landfall.

I hold a nameless feeling,

Like desperate blindness at what tomorrow brings

Like the blurry reminders of who I’ve left behind,

Like lights that do not guide me despite my eyes peeled to the heavens.

I cling to a nameless desire,

Like the goosebump shiver at a warm blanket opened to the ice wind

Like “help me!” screamed on my knees from mountaintops

Like “can we just stay here forever?” whispered in basement shafts of sickle moonlight

Like half your face enshadowed by the streetlamps but never hidden in my memory

Like the resonant frequency that shatters glass by soundwaves, only the sound comes from my throat and reverberates this storm

and the whole world

Like confining claustrophobia I pretend is perfect purely by making up stories in my head

Like taking 10-minute naps on the couch at 1 pm because I’m too weary of the world to fall asleep at 1 am

Like my shadow performing a swaying concert for me on the shiny white walls

Like the scent of sulfur still clinging after a rain shower–

I hold a nameless feeling,

a gnat’s wing

or a hurricane,

whispering

and screaming,

shivering

and on fire,

a bomb loaded

and ticking,

explosive as a will o’ wisp imitating a whip-poor-will’s

wailing wish;

I could blow apart dandelion seeds

and maybe the moon–

that is,

if the ticking clock,

closing in closer to doom,

ever clicks down to zero.

***

If you’re willing, I’d appreciate a pizza. Not a coffee, please.