Heavier than Breath ★★★★

I have words in my head
that I don't really have words for
a yearning for expression that only manifests
as a shrug and a sigh from my native tongue
I feel like I'm not from these parts
like you haven't seen me here before
there builds an empty midnight listless
seeping up through soft earth or toes or floorboards
an estranged tickling sadness
not the kind of fevered heartache that buries you
that swallows you in its engulfing mouth
in a maw lined with teeth made of spun agony
frothing in saliva like carnival glass and unpleasant memories
it's not the kind of feeling that grips your heart
with hands like a vice
squeezing you until you feel like you've lost
every ounce of breath in your desperate lungs
no it's the feeling of wading out into warm choppy waters
feeling the pull of the surf gnaw at your feet
summoning you forward
it's walking out into that deepness
until you can no longer see the shore
and knowing that you are completely alone
it's wading out into a sea
of cocktails and faces and tiny white plates
and being surrounded by blackness
it's being surrounded and knowing
I am completely alone
no one will find me here
the rocks and the sand and the silvery white surf
of my metaphorical interior
have become draped in this rolling breathing dark
like velvet and black holes
like the moment you first become aware
of the concept of death
I wear the shroud and the shawl of this feeling
but there is no fear
for there are no great serpents here to bite at my heels
no traps to catch me and bind my thrashing form
there is only nothing to drag me into that deep abyss
in fact it would be so easy to drift
so comfortable to sink
to slip my body into a sheathe of satin and feather and pillows
to dissolve my limbs and absolve my presence
to float and to wait and drink down the promise of inevitability
until I found some semblance of solid ground
or perhaps instead make some nest in the mangroves
exchange heavy arms for something more fluid
and learn to breathe an air so thick and heavy
and with so much weight
yet my thoughts already have so much weight
slipping from my grasping tongue like pebbles and anchors and sand
the water seeps in and washes away my words
lapping away at the things that tie me here