I am not an artist.

Sometimes I feel afraid to draw your figure. That in the lines, I will find the rigidness that hides in the gentle curves of your ribcage. A normally flexible in and out that feels trapped inside of an invisible, unbearable heaviness —the rise and fall of your breath, where each exhale drags you further inward and I'll lose you for a while in your own stillness or the product of my worries.

I'm wrapped up in a perpetual hum of white noise, like a million voices. Perhaps it's why I never feel lonely enough to run to you. I am just aware of how claustrophobic I feel. Instead, I just want escape, curl up and sleep in your quiet mind; bathe in that rich darkness. I want that. I'm selfish. I don't want to worry about the far away look I scribble in when I sketch your eyes; feel myself falling in them and getting stuck. I cannot conjure them accurately on paper. I don't think I'll ever be able to.

I can't feel solitude now, and I think it's grinding away at the aching parts of my body. Loosens my grip on everything. I put the pen down. I give up. You're beautiful and I feel guilty for trying to imprison it. I don't want to own you. Wish I could ignore the way this pulls between my shoulders, or makes me draw away from the concept of your touch. That dissonance reminds me over and over through this pummel of static that I am worthless, like stone against stone. Tears away at me until I'm raw; until smooth; numb.

It gets louder sometimes.

If I wait long enough, I'll feel thoroughly convinced that you have finally realized that loving me will not elevate you. Not when I'm so afraid to pull you to me. I can't ask you to save me because it'd hurt more than it does to fall. My clumsiness makes me realize how unaware I've been. That I can't recognize us anymore. I just spilled black all over perfectly good work.

Knocking over the ink bottle won't exactly cover up the mistakes I've made, even. My hands are dirty. It wasn't a masterpiece; I feel no great loss. I just turn another page.

This is my fault, I'm sorry.

I'll try again.

I'll try harder.