I want to live in someone’s shadow.

I want to be touched like a fire in the winter forest, like a dry tree by a flame, like a spark and a wire. 

Vanilla bean, dusty moonbeam romances are far too common and somehow completely unseen   by me

I’m a follower. And brainless.

By connection of Earth to fingers, yes! I might think on occasion and feel a sexual urge to write      my borings down rather explicitly so that they are tangible.

But they are not!

My exploits are of the imaginative nature!

They are as real to me as the Barnum mermaid or as real as future. Wavy and foggy, unclear, watered down in light of true realities. Past and present.

Yes, I do still want to live in someone’s shadow. But I’m much too grown up and potbellied to          fit into someone else’s narrow sidewalk silhouette.

I am, as the man I fell in love with on an airplane once said to me, jaded.

‘Jaded early’, I believe, is what he called me, so casually.

So yes, I may clutch the idea of living in someone’s shadow with my palms until my nails        grimace in misunderstanding.

But I don’t have that luxury of being the kind of lover people want to stuff in their pockets!

So instead, I turn all the lights in my bedroom out completely, and I wait for the spots on the wall   to move

I count them like little lambs and circus ladies with small wetsuits on

There is a thin outline of teal light tracing from inside the bathroom door, and heaven could be waiting for me on the other side

So I flip the other way

And pretend I didn’t see

Never do I remember drifting off to sleep