February 11 – keep me here

i started a poem

started spilling my anxieties onto the page

but i’m so so sick

sick of overthinking 

of never being content

so we’re not doing that tonight

tonight was all bright flashing colors

music that cut through me

a beat that i didn’t quite feel i could keep up with

and it’s only honesty to say that i was anxious

but when we danced together,

when they locked eyes with me

and i could hear the lyrics they shouted beneath their mask,

when they’d wrap me tight in their arms,

when they held my hand the whole way home

with my feet in their lap,

none of it really mattered

it’s just love

love that is overwhelming,

but a better overwhelming than anything else

i don’t know how to hold onto this,

how to make my brain understand that nothing ever really matters but this very moment

but i’m trying so hard,

as the days count down to eighteen,

i’m trying to be h e r e

and right now,

i think i’m here,

with my leg pressed against theirs,

on this couch,

seven minutes to midnight,

as here as i can be