I am drawn to your tenderness. More than ever do I miss the soft shapes of your femininity, the sun caught in your wavy hair, your long fingers, and long legs, and long face in my hands while I nibble on your ear and breathe your skin. I do, or I do not miss you – have rarely ever trusted my feelings. I guess that is why when you became important to me, I let go, saying I do not love, saying, I do not know love, because my love feels un-enough. I love, but I do not trust. I do not trust the concept of myself, fitting into a framework of deservingness, of a freeing relation that encompasses both of us in our entirety, because - I do not know it. I fail to integrate the dramatics of my concept of self into the normality of an encouraging relationship. She, me, too frequently, seems far away. I must have left her at some bus stop, train station, airport. Yet, she still seems to think about me, and write me letters, and hold me tightly wrapped in flesh when I shake from fear, and we lay together in silence – encompassing one, detached from the existential need to trust in blank reality and presence. I get angry when you point out how my behavior hurts you. My failure, to commit, failure to grasp love. Failure. Pointing at failure. I get angry because I am left helpless. Failure. When we talk, I stopped arguing for myself. I am not agreeing. I am not indifferent, despite what you say. I register. My cold is a resting place, not an offense, not a failure. Too often, I assume you should know. Should know all the thoughts and steps of my brain and places where the cold arises, float with me on the hot air that is our conflicting emotions. But I see you too. And I know that I do not know and cannot assume. So, I rest and acknowledge. I am torn to nothing and nowhere. Maybe it is true. I struggle. Struggle to pay interest to things that do not concern me. I feel it is because of my incapacity to devote time to myself. Part of me wants to run and scream and feel alive by the act of overflowing, making it all too much and shipping it off. I want to talk to you, be heard and held. I feel as a naked child in a room that I have rented for a night to be part of something artificial. Maybe this is home. I see talking is so stranger, it can make me feel detached from you as well. You think it is all about communication. I hear you. Thinking that I could never find someone who can see me, understand me, know how to react to me and offer me what I need, unless there is a way for me to express this. You are a reflection of my affection. Mirrors and words. Your images on my walls. Both might break down. I am too tall; I may be overlooking. Breaking apart, breaking my heart into apart, breaking my aparts into the same parts, so do you. So do you love me? I cried over you, I am hurting too, blue in skylines and streetlights and sterling. You tell me it's 12 stations to the center. Blindfolded eyes and gasping for breath in stuffy rooms, closed curtains, and fabric in front of our lips that form into a kiss and yet only distort at the sight of the center. There was a lot of petting and listening and laughing and dancing and yet the movement was much louder than the words I stuttered, felt the ignorance of others, it annoyed me, just generally longed not to have to try to be heard, being alone would have been much better for me. But I've already done it again, overloading myself with the other, trying hard to make it beautiful, but there is a lack of honesty. Adjusting expectations and yet not falsifying them remains a delicate act, and I can hardly pull myself up to breathe and smile at myself, because I would only recognize the grimaces of my cheekbones through the illegal substance. For a long time, I thought about what exactly it is that hurt me so much, if it was the breach of trust, the not-telling, the white lie that shook all the elements, all the basic building blocks. There is so much that is not understood, not seen, it shocked me so much, and I really wanted to push you away, get off the next stop and on a different train, but that's what it's all about. Under the linden trees, there are two people who believe they love each other, it says in German poetry. Three stations to the center. You might think I'll have arrived soon, but I'll spend the whole week rushing back and forth, moving around, driving around, showing something, and losing myself lethargically in it. Gustav Klimt and a golden woman. One station. I'm running out of music, must distract me. What is so oppressive to me? Arrive... Usually the emergency brake catches my gaze. And then I stare at it and imagine how everything collapses and remains, wondering if any of it makes (has to make) sense. The sun is startling me. Maybe I am the only one who recognizes how all light breaks into one another and finds itself again, as if the air itself was formed from art. The escape, the exhaustion, the regeneration and remaining destruction, the fear, and the courage to be fearful. Everything has its place, and everything sits with me on the train. You say you wake up and the thought of me terrifies you. Yes, terrorizes you. It made me think of the soul. “I feel safe when you hold me right, you flip, and I am scared for my life.” You say, I have become your burden. Have overshadowed who you are. We share a meal. My pain feels worthless. I ran through so many doors I don’t even know where the hallway is anymore. Can’t see where I started, all entrances are exits, all doors look the same. Joy of others feels dismissive. i need home. am stuck in bitterness and blind determination. We ate in stillness, staring at the food I made thinking of you, thinking that you would like the fish. For me, the food was all that was there, that mattered. You said something, I had already forgotten the next second because it drilled so deeply my eyes wandered deep into the salad while a tear added to the dressing. I wanted you to let go, take the exit, and let me simmer. I have nothing to give, I say. (My thought is glass and steel and steam. My heart is fossil.) That’s a lie. I love. Which is why I am lost. I love, which is why I run through all those doors. I love, which is why I can’t bear, can’t hold on, can’t solve, can’t overcome, can’t leave. Places and time are nothing to the heart, it carries unlimited masses like an ant, without having to play dead, it’s always working, busy and eager. It’s the dissonance of the heart and mind, the heart and life, the heart and time that stones me, that does not live up to life. You are outside my comfort zone. You are all listening and learning, applying the love to all the knowledges and multitudes of experiences we have shared. Thank you for being there and holding us. Holding me like a child to your earth. Thank you for your empathy and your seeing me, for the pain it causes, for the life it whispers. Thank you for sharing dreams and privileges to pursue them, for laying within earth with you, held. Thank you for listening, and reminding, and allowing me to see and open and become held by you. I know now, we carry love within and beyond. This is who we are and there is strength in it, there is loneliness in it, and there is love in it. - Lini.