poems and prose and pent up thoughts

 think of a bucket of water.  then think of a cotton ball. when you first put cotton balls in water, they float.  it is weightless.  Nothing holds that cotton ball down. i go from weightless to drowning in the span of seconds– one moment I'm floating on top of everything, feeling my legs and arms and head and toes all as singular things until– my head is dowsed in that bucket and I start sinking lower and lower and lower– the cotton ball is drowning as it soaks up that water. all of a sudden the water encompasses it; each strand of pure whiteness soaked in wetness until it's resting at the bottom of the bucket. I find myself at the bottom of the bucket. no air is coming in, just more and more heavy, unforgiving water filling up my lungs and weighing down every limb that I can't feel anymore.  I can't escape the bucket.  the cotton ball is struggling.  then someone notices the soggy thing at the bottom of the bucket and takes it out to leave it to dry, and as we dry my l

i've started telling people I love them; it isn't something i'm afraid of: love, but it's something I never say because it seems  too significant to blurt our to just anyone, but i've started saying it to my people back home, and for the first time it feels like a declaration, a reminder, that the people i choose to say it to are significant in my life, to my life, to me–but i still hold the word close to me, like a secret that i can't tell to just anyone because i worry that if i start shouting it from the  rooftops, it won't be that specifical word i save for the ones in my life that i can't live without– so i keep it hidden in my thoughts and only  share it when the time is right and feeling is true.  Being an older sister is talked about a lot:  what it's like, how draining it is, how the oldest siblings  are the perfectionist with the desire to please.  but we never talk about the type of love we have for our younger ones– how it is a different