things i'm most afraid of

Potholes on roads I regularly tread and phone calls and strangers that distract me from my steps. That I’ll fall inside, that no one will notice I’m gone.

You finding out I’m not who I said I was in the first month you met me. That, instead, I’m a crooked mess of promises I made drunk on feelings that I find tough to remember when the morning sun sobers me up. And that I never do the dishes on time.

Lizards that don’t stay put on the unreachable corners of my bedroom wall and cockroaches that suddenly show off how they can fly when I can not. Sometimes even frogs that jump too high and croak too loud and the odd cat that seems on a mission to kill me.

You realising that love is easier in places where I don’t exist.

Diving into a pool on a hot summer day because the water could be cold enough to leave me with shivers for hours and because I know a guy who once did it. The pool turned out to be three feet deep. He didn’t use his legs much after.

You kissing her face as I watch from a corner because I followed you home. You bringing her to your bedroom as I sit on the bench facing your window. You laying her down on the bed curved to my shape on the right side. You doing with her what you swore to only do with me forever.

This weird adventure sport called sky-diving — as though without the proper equipment it wouldn’t just be free falling to death. And people who sign the rights away to their lives, should something happen, for a two second high.

So many things scare me so much, sometimes I worry I’ll forget to breathe.

And still, if it somehow meant that you’d stay, I would dive into an ocean full of reptiles or dive, without a parachute, from the sky straight into a field of potholes. I’d do it every day if it meant you’d never go away.