Some Other Place

I see the tiny marker on your chat window, dancing its soft bleeping motion. Are you asleep on the other side of that blink? Are you dreaming of starlight and cotton candy? Are you waiting for something?

Or maybe you're looking at the night outside on the roof. The soft sounds of the sleeping city echoing. You see the leaves rustling in the dark.

It's lonely, isn't it?

We're all leaving.

There's the constant fear of never actually being okay. That you'll keep hurting others, and everything about you is wrong, from head to toe.

And I can't hold you. Not tonight. I'm just these letters on a page.

Take a deep breath, and I'll grab your hands. I'll be the spot to place your wary mind.

Try to find beauty in the shadows around you. In the sleeping birds and the sky stars and the ground stars. Write poems about dust dancing in front of the stage lights.

Of fairy homes and warm blankets. Christmases in the middle of April, and New Year's Eve in July. Paint strokes and soft melodies played on an old piano.

Feel the ridges on my fingernails, and the scars on my skin. Tousled hair on playful eyes.

We aren't our pain, but the steps we take away from it. Trying to find meaning in how we interact with others, how we connect.

Go to sleep, I'll carry you inside.

You're safe at home, at least for now.