we are perched lightly together atop coffeehouse stools that,

to us, feel like empyreal godly thrones, and i am blessing my eyes

with your face as if no one else in this room exists save for you.

i want to say something but i can't. if there are words mighty enough

to illustrate your magnificence, i do not know what they would be.

right now my focus is on you and solely on you.

i do not wish to concentrate on

how this placid, pleasant swell lulling about in my stomach used to be an iron fist

splaying apart my ribs and inserting between them elastics of frustration;

while the doctors rave to us about alcoholics and anorexics, we quietly slit our wrists

in the waiting room. happily slicing away. and don't you wish that you could just crawl

deep into this white void and stay so still that no one knows you are there?

..........after a while you start to doubt your own existence as well.

..........how it is you who feels the anguish

..........despite the fact that it is their hard hand that drives the knife into your wrist

..........and please let me be the one to slip it out, like a woman might slip out of her laced nightgown, wedding dress white, to lay naked in her safe ivory sheets, unaware

..........that a child has died in the next country, that a boy has put a gun to

..........his face in the next neighbourhood, that a girl

is tracing her veins with a steel flower in the next room, contemplating

how much pain it will be until there is none at all.

how i used to dream

of extinguishing myself just to see if anyone would rush up to me and struggle

to keep me breathing, even if it meant that they would lose the first ten minutes

of their favourite soap or miss a phone call from mr. opportunity. something for me.

everything for you.

how i used to not want to fall asleep for the fear of waking up again.

how some people die because they are too afraid to live and

how i was still here

because i was too afraid to die.

how my entire existence was once sustained

within this paper thin sheet of metal, my sanity clinging to your braided hair,

hoping that i am crazy enough to want to let go. and they wonder why.

he is astonished when he sees the delicate white lines and asks you if you are

ashamed - he believes you aren't, as your sleeves brush up against only your elbows.

and you tell him that it is surprising how few people notice the split skin even when

it cracks apart right beneath their noses. he has nothing to say to that. i didn't

expect that he would. as for me, i have yet to be acknowledged but

i am grateful to be recognized by you.

how empty i was

without you. i don't think i ever realized the void in my substance until you were

around to pave it over. flowers nudge their way towards unforgiving heavens

through the cracks in the cement and we must skip along fleetingly as not to scald

our bare soles on the sun-roasted asphalt. the purple waters lapping around our

pale feet, sticking sand between our toes, but the slight discomfort matters not,

as here i am, next to you. i was impervious and failing before you. but now...

now i've got something to lose -

suddenly there is your voice,

asking me to tell you the best thing that ever happened to me.

i stop studying the bubble boat that drifts along in my caffeinated

atlantic and the one word slips from my tongue as instinctive

and natural as a refreshing breath of cool summer air. of course you.

you are every smile that graces my foreign, wondering lips.

and you duck your gracious head to conceal your reddening cheeks

as you say, "that's too simple." suddenly, i remember the time

when you explained to me how i had lifted you up from something awful.

that was the most gratifying thing anyone's ever told me. not just

the feeling that i was needed, which in itself was both exhilarating and

somewhat alarming, but the knowledge that i could in fact alter someone,

for the better. but i just hide my smile behind this styrofoam

prism of cappuccino and let you believe what you want.