"try to get across"

I feel like such a fool
I never can reach anyone
when I want to. In fact,
I've never wanted to. Except a few times,
rotten times
when somebody I love is suffering, and
it's always something terminal,
though maybe life
is not always what's dying.

But I'm always unable to help
when I try. I come clumsily
close, fall clumsily short

though I seem to reach people
spectacularly, when I wasn't even
trying. At random, just saying
random things, off the top of some
cliff, which for some reason go in.

I think we're all in the same boat
of being the only one who
we can even come close
to know.

But each of us has a million chinks
in what passes for fortifications, and we all
catch glimpses, unbidden, from each other, sometimes

and what we see shocks us
as to the bad, as to the good, sometimes
even as to the familiar

I don't know what I'm trying to
say. I don't know even what I am trying
to help. I don't feel you're like me,
or me like you. But I like you, and
I wish I could save you from this.
What you're trying to do. Which

is going to miss.

I mean, I don't know that. Maybe you'll
succeed: where I've always always failed,
to help someone in need when I was trying
to. Or you might help some one, anyway,
just at random.

when it's too late to help you