When you are not at hand to kiss away my fears I cannot choose but be wretched.

The line frames emotional security as something conferred through intimate presence. “Kiss away my fears” suggests a lover whose touch functions as reassurance, almost a ritual of comfort that dispels anxiety. The speaker’s claim that they “cannot choose but be wretched” when the beloved is absent emphasizes dependence: misery is presented not as melodrama but as inevitability, a loss of agency when the stabilizing figure is gone. The diction (“cannot choose but”) also echoes older, more formal idiom, giving the sentiment a heightened, lyrical fatalism—love as both solace and vulnerability.