Let me live in my head. It’s where I keep my favorite stories. Favorite memories. Favorite versions of the past. The walls keep me warm. It’s the familiarity that calms me down and I’m not leaving unless you drag me out. Fists clenched, my eyes on a lit match- I can burn the whole thing down if I choose to.

So, if I fall, don’t try to catch me- and if I stare for too long, please know that’s my way of loving you- and if I tell you that I hid treasures in the spaces between my mind and yours, don’t go searching.

It’s all mystical in its own sort of beauty. You tell me the plan and I’ll twist it into a map that makes everyone wander back to the start. It feels indignant. It feels like longing in the worst way. It feels like missing and wanting and reaching and fearing and waiting. But we circle back. We all circle back. If we didn’t circle back then none of us would be standing so close to the center-within arms length of the walls in my mind. It’s like we’re all face to face. Together to mark the period that ends a sentence. Ends a good paragraph. Ends a magical chapter. It echoes everyone’s name like a song. But, I’m not singing, I’m crying. -AMT ©️