Needless Worry

I made myself worry again.
I say again when really it’s always.

I could never tell you.
Not even if you paraded a Sultan’s
treasure in front of me.
I just wouldn’t be able to pull my heart out of the well I’ve
hidden it in.

I haven’t taken it out in a while.
I think it likes it down in the
musty, moldy black, at least
I never hear it complain.

Maybe that’s because my ears
are down there too.

That’s not even the problem though.

Even if I somehow gathered up the small
Tidbits of my courage and
decided I could pull it out of the water,
The words I would have practiced
over and over in my head
would leave and fly away.
Unfurl huge canvas sails
and float out the holes where
my ears used to be and slip
onto the rivers where all my other thoughts
seem to go.

The only thing that I have anchored is you.

Yeah, try to pull that load of baggage away.
Isn’t going to happen.

My whole point is that I worried.
I almost cried.
It was late; you said we would talk later.
But it only got later.

My mind didn’t flood with the myriad
of flippant colors that is a dream
but with the stagnant flowing tar of
unadulterated, poisoning thought.

I realized something in the midst of
this.

I realized what love is,
Not what it feels like.
Everyone has felt love,
but the actual fiber its warm blanket is woven from?

It’s a hearty blend of desire and jealousy and hate and happiness and
a multitude of feelings from the entire spectrum
all of them pressed tightly together.

So when I should be cozy and carefree
under covers, all I feel is cold and clammy.
So when you don’t call when I thought you would
all the happiness melts away and the
beach fills with warped logs of concern
and a thick tangle of anxious seaweed.