When I am with you…
I don’t get why my tongue gets tied sometimes
How my throat gets bone dry like parched soil
Why I unwittingly try to impress you
Or how I can’t seem to string together a sentence
I often carry my emotions tightly wound in my chest
and held stiffly at the tip of my tongue
Afraid that if they rolled out
the words would empty me
And leave me out to dry
I am learning slowly but never quite fast enough
How this whole ‘feelings’ thing really work
I know it runs amok in labyrinths
doing merry-go-rounds and playing deceit
As kids we say what we feel
and what we feel we say
We sure held nothing back
We were so brave then
We age not only by number
but also by cowardice
Now we just have feelings choked and dumbed down
stifling it till we are numb
and slapping ourselves hard just to make sure
Before we tell ourselves we are whole again
Is this the way fragile hearts try to beat away their pain?
I’ve learned to run away like I’ve learned to read
second nature and instinctive not skipping a beat
All that went wrong has left me cold
I have taken the sins of past lovers
and dumped them in your arms to cradle
By the time we die we are curled in a fetal position
bent by fear and loathing of ourselves
The ashes cry and make unfulfilled wishes in the wind
I want my words to be naked
not cloaked in velvet lace
I’d like to think that we weren’t trying to fill an invisible void
that when we were together a part of us wanted to be
Teach me how to fall where I know how to pick myself up
so I can dust myself off and learn to fall again
just like when we were kids
by Joy Yap
image: illustration of boy and girl via Shutterstock
