I am fine talking to myself

But when I think about sharing with you my throat closes up (physiological response)

 

Being public unintentionally becomes just another psychosis

Another ‘you or me?’ moment

 

I reach so hard for ‘us’ and yet

It is something we both have to fall

in

     to

 

Trust is so painstakingly constructed

And it is so easily swept away

 

In tides

And tears

And moments of thoughtlessness or frustration

 

I don’t like ‘you or me?’

It presupposes there is no ‘us’

 

That is what makes this hard

Hard to know when to risk being hurt

Hard to know when I’m strong enough for my heart

   to

  break

 again

 

Its true that only mothers can understand some things

But we all understand love and exclusion

And overwhelming pressure

 

Sometimes we choose to let go

And sometimes we choose to hang on

 

We can only know the fit of our own oxygen mask

And we have to trust that we will be there in the end

 

It is hard

being the same

And different

 

Beautiful in the spaces between the pressures

The moments of laughter

And abandon

 

 

It’s so much harder to negotiate when we just don’t understand the words other people use

Makes the quiet easier in comparison