I Can Only Stare
Sleigh Bells
If I could:
I always leave feeling like I should apologize.
I didn't mean to overstep. I didn't mean to say it like that. I didn't mean to say so much. I didn't mean to get into it. I never mean to.
Look: I already know I'm too much; I sit with it constantly. My brain is chaos, is constant, is violence and glitter. I say far less than what runs through me because you're right, we were all right, today: language is insufficient; language shapes it, and cheapens it, and destroys the core of it, and I know the vocabulary only exists in metaphor. What I feel opens up chasms inside me and I would never, fucking ever, change that: not for you, not for anyone. I am violently proud of it. It's not wrong. The question, here, whether I should apologize for not being able to tone it down.
The thing is, though, I don't want to and I don't need to. An apology would just start the conversation I actually want to have: explain to me, please, what the fuck is going on. Why I can't find my footing, why the reverberations keep shaking me off, why I can't seem to trust my senses. I am confounded, which is oh so fine, let me just flash a smile, tilt my chin up in interest, or it would be fine if it didn't matter so much that I fucking understand.
This keeps happening. I keep staring. I don't know how to stop. Those chasms that open up inside me don't go away: I am granite ravines and open wounds. It's days like these I wish we could see inside each other because how else do I explain it to you ----- "it is all. it is nothing." is not a koan to me.
But I flash a smile. Tilt up my chin. Say too much nothing. And leave feeling like I have to apologize.
So: I didn't mean to, honest. I'm sorry if I overstepped, if I let something slip, if I made it too obvious. Even when I was silent, I'm sorry if I spoke too fucking loud.
