You’ll Be Okay?

You know -
I spend all day
reaching people,
teaching people,
helping them find their way.
I know lost,
I know broken,
I know alone,
and I meet them there;
in those darkest places
we sit together
in our homemade boat,
weathering the storm.

Then I come home,
and there is you.
With you
I’m just a me again,
just one more person
who loves and is loved.
It doesn’t matter
what I do all day.
I’m just another best friend
watching their best friend
lose their way.
“What’s the point?”
I wonder,
“of this fancy education?”
if, when it’s you,
I can still only do nothing,
except pray
to the God I’m not sure I believe in,
that somehow,
you’ll be okay.

Those “right” words -
What are they?
Where are they?
In the midst of
a lifetime of poetic madness
I cannot find them,
the words to make you stay,
to protect you
from the demons
in your mind,
in your skin,
in your soul.

I shrink here,
alone in the room
where you’re supposed to be,
and smoke too many cigarettes
while I wait a sleepless night
wondering if you’ll be okay.