You gray tease

tickling at my corners
the tassels of interest.
You poke at me, blow in my ear
long enough to make me think.

Think. Maybe I do want
something. Someone.

You show me the seed but you never plant it.
It never grows into a romcom
a drama
a saga
or blue eyes next door.

It remains dead potential.

It could grow
maybe, hypothetically,
but no soil on earth is suitable.

So it remains, lodged
in the quiet center of my amygdala,
a faint but persistent itch
too deep to reach.

It’s enough to drive someone mad.
Maybe it already has.

I tear off lobes to reach it, to force it to become.
Fear is a seed that could grow but hasn’t.

I am terrified of my own potential.
Not of what I might become,
but of the “could have been but wasn’t,”
because I didn’t want enough.

Meanwhile, trees are growing all around me
Trees towards boys, trees towards girls,
and I’m here,
still here,
disinterested.