Fill Me

  Some nights I feel so full of emotion that I am sure I could quite possibly burst if one more feeling pounded through my head like an over eager child in class, hand extended and waving, begging to be noticed.
  It could be nervous frustration that's fluttering like an excited bird against the cage of my ribs. Or perhaps another night, anger is pushing at the knitted seams that holds my skin together and keeps my beating heart in. Maybe sadness drowns my brain in its salty oceans of fear that swirl down the drains and leak slowly out of my eyes. This one that's bitter yet indulgent, sweet and sour, leaves a track of ugly across my heart and jealousy prickling in my eyes -- it's called envy I think. Love is easy and beautiful and deep. And is it elation that jitters my hands, gives me shivers, makes my feet leap and want to fly, my eyes crinkle as happiness breaks out in beaming smiles across my face?
  Other nights though, when I feel as empty as a watering can that poured out all of its substance onto the flowers that surround it, and while the flowers might be well wetted, the watering can feels only the loneliness that rattles around in its tin shell -- and nothing much else.
  I wish I could bottle emotions. Save them all, even the bad ones, for days when I feel nothing. When I'm sucked dry like a juice box that a kindergardener has slurped clean, just crinkled and empty cardboard, even the air taken from me, left to bake and fade with the sun on the side of the road, and eventually, forgotten, melt into the environment.
  Because even the bad emotions that prick my heart like barbed wire and make it bleed a little are better then the emptiness that sometimes drains me. When that happens, I don't know what to do, and I panic.
  I am stripped of my essence, vulnerable to the environment-- the winds of worry wash wearily over and the rains of insecurity that pound down on my body lick me clean-as-a-cat of my confidence.
  "Fill me," is my plea. To my friends, my work, my art, my god. "Life's too short for emptiness."