apples for winter

i have people

stored up in side of me like

things i keep little glass cases, or in pockets and hidden places

but never take out, like a series of

just-in-cases

& sometimes i'll take them out to look at their faces

& they're nice faces, kind or beautiful or both, but

but none of them are here

& none of them are holding me like someone who needs to be held, not like someone

that it might be fun to hold

& none of them are real,

really

but you know, they all hurt.

i have people

lined up in my heart in neat little rows

& columns and no one can see it but the

columns i stand on are shivering

like cold and breaking bones

i have people who i suppose i might want

one day, if all the rest of them weren't there, too, looking on

from the bowels of my soul like bitter ghosts

although, of course, they aren't bitter because they don't know they could be

i have people i love

& people i have loved

& people in between

& people i have known & might have loved, or 

wanted to love, or just wanted to be loved

by—

i have them stored up like apples for winter, like

lifeboats on a ship that may or may not be broken, but that i don't want to seem

paranoid enough to check.

i have them all inside of me & god it hurts,

hurts, there, to have them all bursting & crashing around & to know that at any moment they might all come pouring out of me & for now they haven't

but it hurts.

i'm happy.

look at me. i'm happy as a bird in a tra-la-lee-tree & i've practiced telling the people in my pockets how happy i am, really, 

without anyone & as far as i can tell it's true. i walk, i,

i function, i laugh & it's for real

but there are still people sitting inside me

& there are too many

& they are too much

& they all hurt

& i keep them because really, i have none of them.

i'm not

heartbroken

i'm not

pining or looking for

a pick-me-up chipper letter from a friend who only knows how to be optimistic for me.

i'm not

in love, actually, at least not in the usual understandable way because of all the people i kept

stuffed in drawers like cough drops & letter openers—

they are talking to me all at once 

& i am worrying about all of them at once & if there is love among them,

like a new, true, June-sky-blue love,

i can't even hear it.

i'm standing in a cellar with too many apples

& i should throw some of them away but i don't know which one might be

the one to keep.

i'm standing on the deck of a ship sinking from the weight of too many lifeboats

& i'd take one & save myself but i don't know which one

might sink.

i'm scared.

i'm stuck.

i'm not traumatized, they just—

they hurt sometimes, when they get too loud, asking questions like why am i

still here, & questions like don't you think i'm making you miserable & demanding i 

discard the others or demanding to be let

go—

they hurt sometimes is all.

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