the sea anemone in me

I heard what you said, I've said it to myself and all the other voices of reason have said it in turn.
Be careful, be mindful, be watchful. Be careful careful careful.

I hear, I absorb, I agree and I repeat. Those words stay somewhere on the outskirts of the pools in my heart, whose depths are doubling and tripling each and every time you smile, or your hand touches mine. My mind has a BE CAREFUL banner on display, at every entrance and every exit. The worker ants who live up there and sort and tunnel and connect and move all the feelings into thoughts, all the thoughts into actions, they've all got on BE CAREFUL jerseys, BE CAREFUL baseball caps. But as for me? I'm in that fog right now, the perfect moments of stillness. It isn't clearing or thinning and under that veil I can dance and no one but you sees, no one but you knows where to find me. I can sing out and you'll come, I can even whisper with confidence that this fog doesn't distort or cover, it carries. My hands have memories all their own and each feels naked on their own.. lonely. The rest of my body is a perfectly paved roadway, every turn and rest stop carefully marked in a language I know you alone can read. Just how I want it to be.

And all the other things fade away when you come through the door. There's no room for memory or heartache or the distances that exist or the other things that have been a weight dragging me along the ocean floor. It's like a balloon being set free from a terrible child's grasp, soaring, finally. Tickled by the air and riding the currents, sharing great altitudes with the birds.

Even still my realism is on the forefront of every single thing I do. It's always before my eyes like a parallel universe and through each situation I can see the alternate sides, the what if's. What's missing though is the pessimism, the dreadful waiting I usually do, knowing it's all falling apart at any moment, feeling that I'm riding the river in complete darkness and the falls are just ahead and the roaring tells me I will fall, I will fall. With you I'm not preparing for the fall, I still know somewhere along the river will be rocks and rapids but it's okay.

Somehow it's nothing but okay.