3AM

You’re up in those lost hours,
those grasping hours,
those hide-and-go-seek, marco-polo, hands-clenching-at-night hours,
and you’re searching.
It’s quiet and it’s freezing but that side of your pillow is asphalt-in-summer hot,
and your veins are awake and your mouth is thick and you’re searching.

You’re searching like a man who misplaced his mind in a woman,
yes, you’re in that deep, and you’re searching.
The air is stale and the seconds are expressionless, but you’ve got life in you, plenty.
systole, diastole.

Your heart is vulnerable, so vulnerable, but your thoughts are a panacea.
Your pupils are nudged up against the constellations on your eyelids,
the ones that look like those days you’ve so blessedly passed by –
when your best friend could not look at you,
when your parents could not speak,
when your dad pulled at your sister’s arm, and she yelled things you did not quite comprehend, yelled that she would call the police, and you could not breathe.

 – those are the days that split apart your vulnerable heart.
And those days are bitter, so bitter, but your words are sweet.

See, you’re up in those lost hours,
stretching yourself thin,
because you are so tragically human,
but the thoughts, the words, they are not.
So you’re up watching someone paint the clouds amber, watching your fingers tremble like strings pulled through a bow, watching those bitter days spin out from within you, Rapunzel’s gold, your burden, your benediction,
because you are so human, so lost,
and this is your only way to search.