She told me she was hollow

it pleases me that my dreams still evoke the kind of longing that feels exactly like being 23, the kind of bottomless ache that cannot be sated except for during the kiss, only for the brief moment that it lasts, the ache just recedes enough to reveal the waterlines and then the tide washes back in. it feels like drowning in a shot glass, windchime in a hurricane. it crushes the air out of my lungs gently and i am so grateful, weepingly grateful that i can still access this ache because i love the way it feels to be so caught up in the somatic, forgetting everything cerebral. my brain has matured, it is all words and paragraphs, dry and compact and scheduled order. all this predictability, i think, until a mouse scampers through it leaving tiny precious handprints, my heart abruptly swells and recedes and swells again. and i do remember what it is like to want something so much that it feels like i will die. i will die. i remember that aching loneliness, i embrace it. it has everything to do with the present moment when i can remember the taste of it, the dull echo of it, the darkness and the still. when real life is satisfying and calm i am grateful for this aching memory and this hollow dream.