Love,

I cannot tell you why I need to be alone

When I put these words to paper.

Only that, when I am alone,

I snorkel in the deep,

Deeper than anyone has ventured,

And around the corner of the coral,

A creature no one has ever seen before waits for me to play

Hide and seek.

Here, the water has a heartbeat

My heartbeat

And its pulse so far down is

My pulse,

So I swim toward the peeking beast,

My syrup-slow hand reaches out so I can almost touch it,

Almost glimpse it,

But your voice saying my name

Pulls me upward too fast,

And I’m spitting up, choking, can’t breathe

Spluttering. I was so close, so close to reaching it.

“Going to bed soon?” you ask.

Your words travel so fast,

Snipping, slicing, and cutting up what it looked like down there,

And I try to grab at the slivers of what I saw,

But it’s sand in my sieve-hands,

Sieve head

Gone. Gone. Gone.

No. I’m not going to bed soon.

I have to go back.

It’s gonna take me awhile to get there.