Manic Love

There is this feeling that I sometimes find myself falling into
it makes my blood feel electric in my veins,
my skin ill fits the new shape of my body
as though I am a whole new person, somehow thrust into a life that doesn't belong to me.

I find myself obsessing, craving
just one more look at his perfect eyes and i'll get back to work.
just for a second I want to see the way his lips are pursed, and i'll go back to sleep.
Again I only want to glimpse the way his eyes have crinkled in a smile,
I promise I'll stop staring in a moment, but just one more.

Suddenly I realize that I am miserable, my heart aches and breaks and yearns to turn my life upon its head, just so that I might not feel this awful feeling anymore.
I can not stand the obsession, this thing that I have come to call 'The Manic Love'
I hate it with all of my being and yet I can not turn away.

I am never allowed the indulgence that might, mercifully, quench my thirst
never allowed to love or lust as wildly as I wish
the embers of frenzied dreams of wild romance and hateful lust are left to cool upon the weathered hearth of my heart

Here, in my bed when the embers have cooled
when my body has been forced back into a shape the fits inside my skin
after all the electricity has gone out of my blood
I will sit and look back on my manic love
and I will wish again the it could have ended some other way
I will weep for the aborted dreams that tried to grow in the fertile soil of those heart aching moments
I no longer have the strength to cultivate such unlikely dreams among the ashes of the dying manic love.
and I will dread the coming of another day, and another day, and another, and another...
The slow march of time goes on, heedless of my hollow heart and then

Finally! At long, long last! my skin has stretched, or my body has shrunk and I almost feel like me again
what beautiful ecstasy to feel my own hands again, to dream my own dreams again
I feel as though I might look about and find meaning in the world again

And there, out of the corner of my eye, I see a strangers smile
I see dark eyelashes, and bright eyes and a personality to fill a stadium.......

and my blood becomes electric