the heat rises.  i watch it rise.  i watch it from this particular orange couch, though the manufacturers might call it burnt sienna, or bittersweet, or some shit like that.  i myself, am trying to simplify.  to sort out the complications, dispose of them & decipher the rawness of whatever is left.  so here in this makeshift room next to thesaurus, robitussin & band-aids, the couch is orange.  and i am on it.  sprawled.  watching daylight bubble from the ground, boil into a new bloom, die.  as we must all eventually bubble, bloom & die.

right now there are anxieties.  phobias almost.  certainly hesitations.  men who sit with me during thunderstorms listening to zepplin while the wind does its thing outside.  the silence is awkward.  i want to steal a kiss.  a heart.  a quick quiet movement of hand.  but i have stood out in the rain.  let it bleed on me.  and the boy to my left is not so eloquent about my wetness.  i am an accumulation of tiny miracles and messes.  & this. this is the something rich.  this is the something quiet & borrowed.  moments, when i know i should slip my wet self up against him.  dampen his hesitation with a lick to the collarbone or a touch to the brow.  but he fears my femininity & right now there are anxieties, phobias, loves that have never been returned or left too quicky, tugging at our insides.  i feel them briefly.  feeding the insecurity.  pulling back the notion that perhaps, there is something bigger hidden in all this.

with that i sink into some unnamable thing.  steal the moment, not the kiss.  & wonder exactly why vulnerability is so hard to uncover.

sometimes i am all that keeps me from boiling into a new bloom.