Fault Lines

My emotions are powerfully painful,

complex like a maze I can’t find my way out of —

no map, no breadcrumbs,

just my own footsteps echoing

through wrong turns that look like home.

My happiness is euphoric,

like gravity took the day off,

like nothing can touch me here —

like I finally found the version of me

everyone gets to keep.

Until it isn’t.

Anger rages outwards,

burning the world around me,

a wildfire with my pulse in its center,

sirens stitched into my breath,

a heat that says see me, stay, don’t forget me.

Love is a cliff I keep running toward —

arms open, eyes closed,

trusting the air to catch me.

Sometimes it does.

Sometimes it teaches me how fast I can fall.

I can adore you with cathedral devotion

and fear you with the same intensity,

sometimes in the same breath.

My heart flips light switches labeled

forever and never again

with no warning in between.

I hate you —

don’t leave me.

I want you close.

I want you to stay.

I want to live inside your presence

like a house with all the lights on —

and when you step back,

my mind starts boarding the windows.

Impulses outrun my reasons.

I say things before my fear finishes translating.

I run before I remember why I was standing still.

I burn bridges while begging someone

to meet me on the other side.

There are days my reflection feels like a stranger

wearing my face,

days my name doesn’t sit right on my tongue,

days I feel like a draft

that never became a finished version.

Sadness for me is thinking about all the ways I can be un-alive.

It’s the quiet spiral,

the inward gravity,

the voice that tries to convince me

I am too much,

too fragile,

too difficult to keep.

And still —

I am here.

Learning how to hold fire

without setting myself on fire.

Learning how to ask for closeness

without turning it into a storm.

Still becoming someone

who can be loved

without disappearing.