Apprehension
Roughest sketch from 2018, but mostly composed over the past three months.
“Smoking, I watched the endless April rain beyond the window.”
—”Norwegian Wood,”—H. Murakami
Since you told me that you could not bear it,
I forebore the baring of my heart.
Swallowing, I felt it sinking down
Until my stomach roiled when it lodged—
A thing like stone and silence—in the pit.
It felt, somehow, a bit,
Like a betrayal.
And the waning Winter light which found me
Confident and capable—and eager
(Maybe over-eager) to express to you
That burden we (or I) had felt
Like some suspended sharpness overhead
Of every interaction for some time—
Disappeared.
I had assumed that since you’d poured
Your pain like oil over me,
As if for an anointing;
Since you’d asked, so often and so fruitlessly,
Me for expression of my thoughts or feelings;
Since I take words spoken earnestly
At something like face value;
Since a dozen other things
Which seemed right at the time,
What words I offered would,
In your own way,
Be treasured and accepted,
Understood…
But: when I started speaking
And saw terror in your eyes—
It tripped so quickly to your tongue
And interrupted me mid my first sentence—
My response was automatic:
Inner panic; outward calm;
The swallowing of what I’d meant to say.
I heard a voice as cold and clear as ice
Inside my head insisting I had know
Of this but fled, from the beginning running
To a comforting delusion like a magic spell
Upon myself to modify perception
(See your prison as a palace! Soiled rags as silk!
Self-love as a sacrifice!)—
It broke.
All I recall, now, is that I had, then,
Some words for some emotion
Which, unspoken, since has burrowed down
Beyond my clawing reach
And might yet rise again.
But life lasts too long for regrets like these:
All worms and words and worlds turn
While we are doomed to shatter on the surface.
It should have been, for me, a gesture intimate
And open as the brushing of the cheek with fingertip
When I would tuck that one unruly strand
Of fickle hair behind your perfect ear.
Minor edit on 11/15/2025 to adjust a full-stop to an ellipsis