With Without

**originally written 9/12/09**

Why is it that the idea of being with you
Scares me more than being without you?
What kind of sane person chooses that?!
It's like I chose what was behind door #1:
The certainty of emptiness,
A black hole for a spotlight,
The solidity, the beautiful, concrete solidity
Of nothingness.
Because I couldn't handle the storm tossed seas
Behind door #3.
Wave after terrible wave,
Crashing
Crushing
My little boat of a body,
Making me feel like the only reason
I was drowning was because I never learned how to swim.
And door #2?
The straight jacket of you?
Forget it!
Can't live
Can't breathe
Can't move
Cuz I'm too scared that if I do
I'll lose a drop
A breath
A word
Of you.
No freedom versus the freedom of nothing. . .
Hmmm. . .
It's safer here in the quiet without the sound
Of my boots knocking---
No reference implied
To what you'd want to do with me on a Saturday night.
It's safer with the pain of knowing I'm alone with
Nothingness
Than knowing I'll have nothing for the pain
That'll come to spill my guts---
Open me up so far in
And forgive all of my sins---
Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe, baby.
That terrible word of "maybe."
A gray zone of uncertainty.
Not light
Not dark.
Pre-dawn fog
Still not sure if it wants to lift
The filmy veil of night.
Maybe means waiting.
An eye of the hurricane,
A loosening of a strap---
A prison
In its own writing of the word.
Bye baby maybe.
Hello. . .
Nobody.
Eeny
Meeny
Miny
Mo,
I choose. . .
This.
. . . . . .
What a way to go.