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A rough-around-the-edges poem: Talk Me Down

I’m on the precipice of panic, I’ve said something and I can’t retract it

and worse still you won’t let me. I’m on the cusp of begging you to forget me

but you’ve already made it uncomfortably clear that no matter how near

to the cliff face I feel, you’re not letting me go anywhere. And so I run.

Wind in hair, feet pounding ground, I’m endeavouring to outrun light

and sound but then you catch me by the collar just as my feet

are about to become unbound. I’m on the edge of something now,

inhaling sea air and as my lungs contract you try to pull me back in tact

but I’m still wriggling against you. You can’t understand what I’m hiding

from on the cliff top, why a long drop and a slow stop might seem

more appealing that whatever these emotions are that I’m feeling,

which should give you an idea of how itchy they make me, or maybe

an idea of how few I’m showing and how many I’m really concealing.

I can feel a world of love inside my chest, and despite my best efforts

to stifle it, it is now stifling me. Shoving happiness in every crevice

and in every blank space around me and now this has finally found me,

I’ve never been so simultaneously content and hell-bent to ruin something,

mostly for fear, or blind panic, that someone else will take it away.

You say that’s a stupid tactic for saving myself, and I want to disagree

out of pure spite despite knowing that you’re right and that this here

cliff top, is not a sensible platform on which to turn my feelings around.

I take a step closer to safer ground, legs crossed and pulled up towards me,

still comfortably close to the crag, as I wait for you to talk me down. 

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