Author’s Note (edited 12/3/03): Inspired by listening to someone’s accounts of jealousy. I tried to capture the frame of mind. This kind of lacks punctuation…I could have put some in, but it felt stilted that way. This poem is almost a song in my head, and it destroys the cadence to punctuate. Hopefully, that feeling comes through.

********

You spin a web of words around me as if

You were trapping me in, and I wonder if you’ve

Ever felt oppressed and strangled

Ever taken pause from where you

Dance around us

You float about us

As if nothing could touch you

You linger momentarily

As if impressing your touch when all you need do is

Simply be, everything you are

Leaves the deepest scar on me

I wonder if you’ve ever been gouged

Or branded by the look of someone

Else, or if you’ve always known instinctively

Just how to take me

Just how to scorch us

But no one feels the sting

Everything about you is simmering heat

But you’re pleasantly cool and calming to the

Touch, but all I’ve had is too much of you

So I’m crashing and burning

Sinking and drowning in everything

I’ve ever known, it now revolves around you

You make everything

New, as if it had never graced the world before

You make everything more

I wish I could be just a facet of you, like an

Emerald, the gleaming jealousy takes over me

I’ll settle for the silver you’re set in and I’ll

Make you look good, they’ll admire your beauty in me

Everybody just sees through me

Everything I am has suddenly become you

It’s all and nothing and I’m never one thing

I don’t know where it ends and all that I am is

You, all that I am is you

That’s all I ever wanted to be

But something about you

Just feels so empty inside me

A gaping hole, it seems like there’s something

Missing in my life, but everything’s there for you

Everyone’s there, and everyone cares for

Anything about you, and I can’t stand

If they don’t, if they do, I don’t know anymore

Apart from your side I feel like I could be nothing

And everything, the freedom soars inside me

Until I feel whole, and yet I feel like

I’m as fractured and shattered as broken glass

As weightless as air, I’m hardly substantial

And I have zero potential unless I can

Contribute to you, make you faster

Stronger and better and everything

Amplified, exemplified in you

You make everything true

You make every dream come true

So I wonder why sometimes you cry

And feel as worthless as I do, as tarnished as my

Blackened silver, and slivered, like burning pain

And hardly substantial until you’re polished again

Then I feel like I could be anything

If you could just feel and be anything like me

Like I exist solely for your purpose but then

Your purpose is me, and I can be free and

Something other than what I have moulded

Suddenly everything before me unfurls

Unfolded, every opportunity, perfect for a facet of you

Reflected in me

I make you shine and gleam and I

Reflect on you, reflect on me

Now that you and me is we