Want.

I wanted to be significant

I wanted to be the impossible girl in a room full of languages

The hero and the madman possessed,

Both who dream of something more

I wanted to be the sky falling and the running around trying to save it

I wanted my words to set the sky alight and the sea boiling

Instead,

I am an old man

Wringing my hands and dreaming

About the days when everything was possible

And these hands could hold onto anything.

And those hands of yours

I feel like they could pull me deep into the ocean

Most days I wouldn’t even mind

But would find my place among the fishes

Building with coral and weeds until I made us a home.

When you’re around, I want to tell you how all those past lives of mine shout

With the joy of a thousand children given balloons

But each time I refrain, knowing it would hold too much

And your hands are too small

And too far away

And I have become too much of a coward

Somewhere, I think, between my eleventh birthday and the three quarters that followed

I learned what it meant to grow up

About mistakes and redemption

And how much it hurt

To want to be wanted

Instead, I turn and fall and die

And it is all just a dream

But I wake up each time

With a beating heart and my lungs on fire and I wonder
If you can feel it:

How much I want to be wanted.