Stay with Me

I just got the sadness shivers,

a bird flock fleeing from my ribs,

it’s almost like my bones know

what my heart’s getting into,

how my tears seek to swim

like oceans and floors are synonyms

—

all the sounds of a skin assail me,

I mean “sounds” the way vibrations

bong ear drums and pass as electrical currents

to my mind–

my skin carries the same electricity

for sounds as they do for cold and cling and wet

and they crescendo a symphony in me

beneath an evening breeze

midnight freeze

on every sea;

these sounds in my fingers

carry worlds it feels like,

and I know I’m not so vast as to hold up the world,

except,

there’s no gravity in space

so maybe my feet on the ground do keep the planet from falling toward the sun,

maybe every time I jump, the planet falls

toward me,

but okay, I know that’s not real,

I know physics and orbits don’t work like that

but maybe I can pretend–

because if I hold up the earth,

I could hold other worlds too

and if I hold those worlds

I can show them to everyone,

and if I show them, we might know

how much we share–

maybe these tears

and these birds on my skin

aren’t just a me problem

maybe they’re a global migration

of rainstorms

and arctic terns

above populous cities,

maybe this symphony of lightning in my mind

isn’t a dream only I see

maybe we could all run away forever

maybe we could find somewhere warm enough

to keep the shivers at bay,

maybe we could find somewhere quiet enough

to hear our own voices sing,

maybe in that song we’d harness magic

and maybe it’d heal our hearts,

save our veins from being forever frozen

our eyes forever open

maybe in our words we’ll discover how to finally let our worlds go

and we could fly that way

or we could carry them on our backs like blankets

but I just got the sadness shivers

and my fingers tremble under the weight

and here comes my ice floe body

melting at the hold of soft salt water

lighting up another thirsty dream in me.