Henry J. Young

Authorial Intent Doesn't Matter

she

The comfort you feel when she is near.

The love you feel.

The cool embrace

Like a blanket you keep by the foot of your bed

so it doesn’t overwhelm you with its warmth.

Like the crack you leave in the panes of the windows

So your room doesn’t feel trapped.

Nothing is right when she’s gone.

You want to be near her.

Troubling though it seems,

You wish to be suffocated

Wrapped.

Smothered.

Comforted.

Strangled.

Smuggled.

You wish you could put her in a pocket

Or at least fit in hers

You don’t want to be thrown around as the wind sees fit but you are.

No amount of struggling will stop it.

You flutter like a sheet of paper in the monsoon

But you are not paper

Even the strongest foundations shudder under such pressure.

You feel but do not register a response.

The doctors wonder why,

Your friends wonder why,

She

Does

Not

Wonder

For she knows

She sees

She feels

She is the comforting smell of home on your birthday.

The familiarity of your own arms

Wrapped around you.

If only you could hug yourself

You used to think;

as the bullies who do not know what they are to you

walked by the lunch table

Where you sat, headphones blaring in order to drown out the tinnitus of being alone.

She is the warm feeling on your stomach

After a bowl of soup on a warm day.

The burn never seems to satisfy you.

The coughing never seems to stop.

The monster is not under your bed,

It is in you

You feel it when you feel weakest;

In the line to receive your lunch,

Working to pay for it.

Sleeping next to someone special

The beast roars in your chest

Begging

Scratching

Clawing

Fighting

Losing

Because she is there.

She finds a way to soothe you.

Even if she doesn’t know how,

She finds a way.

Because she is there.

She doesn’t know that

She is the one person

That finished your puzzle;

That last piece you find in your kitchen

When you had thought it was hopeless.

She doesn’t complete you,

You were complete before she came along,

She just finally found the piece lost under the refrigerator

She never finds you puzzling

Even when you cant understand the words your brain is spouting

She hears and is able to play as the decoder ring

She is the prize at the end of the cereal box and she is

The prize

To save

For life

The thunder peals

Though you have never been scared of the way it sounds

Crackling through the night

You cuddle

A little closer

To her

Because

She

Is

There