what i want

i get on the road and run, quietly, like a moth tracing the rim of a dying lamp.
tires whisper to the night and my heartbeat answers in small, steady knocks.
i move to fold myself into the thin seam between here and elsewhere.

i want to fall, softly, without fanfare, as if untying a single seam on a coat.
i want to dissolve into salt and tide until my name is just a bruise of foam on the shore.
i want to drive until the roadside blurs into a watercolour and the beautiful light of morning never arrives to wake me.

i want the lights to stop asking my name.

i never want to feel, and yet feeling is a candle that keeps relighting itself inside my ribs.
i never want to think; thought is a house with all its rooms full of old, polite storms.
i never want to be me, the small, tremulous radio that keeps trying to tune into someone elses voice.

i do so much and get nothing back.
a single wish for a gentle day comes and goes like a paper boat on a rain puddle,
so fragile i catch it with two slow fingers and it slips away, leaving only the cold of my palm.

maybe i don't want it to return. maybe i want the ache to be company, a soft stone i can hold against my chest.
i want nowhere to put it down, no shelf that could betray the weight of it, only the hush of keeping it close.
words feel like thin glass, beautiful and always a little dangerous to hold.

i don't want to write anymore; sentences taste like ash behind my teeth.
i don't want to feel anymore; feelings are winter birds that refuse to fly south.
i don't want this. i breathe, and the breath sounds too loud in the quiet room.

i don't want to write anymore.
i don't want to feel anymore.
i don't want this. i-