::Hands::

   The conditions of my conditioning lack focus. I am full of blurred lines and bottomless hope. I've never really gotten involved in anything. I have a talent for floating. I give the importance to others. I breathe when I am close and that breath gives the illusion of weight. I am a constant mover. I hover over many spaces at the same time ready at any moment to drop my hands. To fold at the table of life and of love because the illusion of freedom satisfies. Each breath becomes a dance. The bluff, the mask, the conversation, the dream.
   I play with a full deck that tends to switch suits. The jokers are wild and I become flush with fools and foolishly I hold this hand steady. I give myself the room to be tempted to make the quick decision. I give myself the room to make the wrong choice. I give myself the permission to take the easy way out. I lick my lips and smile. Put on my bravest face and gingerly excuse myself from the table. I decide I don't like the game. The pace is too slow. The chatter of the other players grates the nerves or feels like an anchor of complications too heavy to chain myself to.
   I've been known to champion the losing odds. To stay on ships faithfully when I know they are built to sink. I carry the foolish knack for wasting time, or losing time because I can lose myself so easily. If I breathe deeply enough I'll get lost in the sound and tempo of the air. I can watch the ocean and become it for awhile. I can turn away and pull you into me all at the same time. There are all these feelings. They flow like rivers burnt by the past. The mistakes that sunk deep and scarred, the things I chose instead, the things I can never forget, the armor I decorate fresh and fully everyday.
   These feelings dance like my own shadow. The faint flicker of movement I try to hide myself in. Worlds of words and emptiness with so much promise. I paint myself in the colors of the flame. I pull the blue center out and blanket myself in it's center. As my pulse rushes the heat begins create something bigger. Something that isn't just mine anymore. I feel myself choosing. I hear myself say Yes! Yes I choose you...I can have you...Yes. The word echoes as I spark all over. The taste of skin soaked in fantasy spreads behind my eyes. I lay glazed in lacy moods and purity. The purity of the this me.
   This me full of desires. This me that's wanting to be close. The one that wants something bigger that isn't just mine to choose. I shiver and shrink. My impulses can lead me into things I can't forget. There are things I can barely remember that become whispers on my frame. Lightly stinging the spaces between my fingers because I held the wrong cards so long they've sliced clean through. I can be my own trick. I move in dreams as currency, like breathing, they are my existence and my home. I seek out the real experience. I am attracted to it's flux and unsteadiness. I let it see me. I stand in front of it a smiling mirage. I am so light and uninvolved and delicate like the candles flame. I let it choose me.
   Choices are made quickly. I wrap myself up in the experience. My body soaks in every word, breath, heartbeat until I am so deeply inside the shape of things I can almost get lost in it. I heat up with fever and the desire for more. It is here where I get nervous. I look around for that solitary space where I can see the idea of freedom at all times. I look for the window as things begin to flare up. I hastily throw it open and let all the cold air fill this shape with distance. I look for reasons to drop my hands, to disappear, to pull away.
   The joker is wild. The wild card is unpredictable. The space to love gets clouded by you and me and everything else that has happened before we were anything. Before we were bodies in the same room, or conversations on the telephone line. I spend most of my life passing time with nothing and no one. I live with the shades and shadows of myself like branches on a tree. I can separate from each and every part at anytime and I let all this happens now. I twist and turn away because I want to burn. I want to get lost in the flames and forget all I have ever learned, all I have ever been and all these games I have overplayed.
    I realize that yes, I can want you. Yes, you can be something. Yes, we can do this. I don't know how to drop my hands. I don't know how to handle the heat or let myself be fully involved. I don't know how to be in the space for loving and not try to make my own separate space at the same time. I am tired of all my company. The nothing and no ones I pass my time with. I have to pull myself out of the shade and just let something happen. Something bigger than myself can happen and it won't just be up to me choose. It won't just be mine...it will be something new. It will be OURS.