I don’t wake up alone every night —
but it might as well feel that way.
I’ve left bars with women whose faces I can picture
but whose names vanish by sunrise.
They pour drinks, I pour myself into them,
and for a few hours it feels like I’m overflowing.
By morning, I’m hollow again,
like someone scooped the center out of me
while I wasn’t looking.
I’ve learned to keep one hand on the wheel
and one foot hovering over the brakes.
No matter how soft the laugh,
no matter how warm the skin,
I never let myself steer all the way in.
It isn’t fear.
It’s that I’m still reserving a seat for you,
like a candle burning in an empty booth,
just in case you wander back hungry.
Some nights I take strangers home
and try to pretend I’m starving —
but I’m only nibbling at the edge of something
I don’t really want.
It’s appetite without hunger,
a thirst that no glass can touch.
I tell myself it’s just passing time,
keeping my heart from rusting in the rain,
but really it’s me refusing to give it away
to someone who isn’t you.
I speak in half-sentences.
I laugh at the right moments.
I press close enough to feel human,
but not close enough to feel real.
And when the words come to my lips,
I swallow them whole,
because I’m saving them —
like folded money in a wallet I never open —
for the day you might need to hear them again.