standstill

Sometimes you feel like pouring the contents of your heart out in their entirety; 

tendinous cords and all

just letting it all out and not care, for once, about the many many walls you have carefully constructed, not care about the spikes running along their tops or the deep trenches at the bottom, not care at all and 

just get past it all in one giant brave leap of faith.

There are some people you want to make the jump for. Some people your heart tells you you can trust fully wholeheartedly completely 

without any doubts 

at all.

But still the tiny voice at the back of your head bugs you, still it tells you to be wary. 

surely this cannot end well. It's just not possible. 

So you retreat into your shell.

And then

at the end of it all, it’s you again. 

you with your thoughts and your crippling self-doubts and fears and insecurities

you with your meticulously erected barriers

you with the invisible hand crushing around your heart, squeezing and squeezing and squeezing until it goes squidge between the fingers and turns into a mess.

just you 

alone.

brambles

A smile plays at the edge of his lips. He looks at her all tired eyed; all wisdom and experience and lack of sleep, and decides not to say anything. 

He is absentmindedly playing with a strand of her hair. Twirling it around his long fingers, letting it go again. 

She hates it when he does this. Hates it when he shuts himself out completely. She knows he’s not there. He may be able to fool others with his well-timed nods and smiles, his perfunctory words of greeting, his seemingly nonchalant demeanor, but she knows. She knows that even when listening to her talk he is off somewhere else, in his own little world, getting repeatedly assaulted by unpleasant thoughts that will not leave him alone. She hates how vast amounts of prodding would only produce a meager ‘Me? Oh I’ll be fine by tomorrow, just need to get my head screwed on straight… look at you, worrying about silly old ME, of all people!’. And then he’d proceed to attack her with wiggling fingers, tickling relentlessly until she breathlessly begged for mercy. 

She doesn’t like it when he does that. 

Laugh it off like it’s nothing, when she knows it’s eating him up from the inside, that he’s going absolutely stark raving mad thinking about it. Not that she would be of much practical help, not really… but she’d be there. And maybe, just maybe, he’d realize that sometimes that was all that was needed, that was all that helped.