Compassion

At what age did you learn your compassion? I learned mine young, and he worked his entire life to unlearn his. Compassion is a poor man's wealth, don't you understand. And he didn't want to be poor. So he gave all of his away, and my feet hurt from its colossal mass. How poor this man had to have been, burdened with such riches.

Dreamer

I will never meet the man of my dreams. I don't dream, you see. And my men all seem to live in nightmares.

sunflower

I imagine his love the way sunflowers imagine the moon;
a cruel reminder that, "in the dark, the sun is still rising, just not for you."

armor

I always found it a little bit strange
that he's both the armor and the blade.

packet

I tried so hard to make him understand; I tried to nail down the ether of my feelings, to packet the little electrical sparks between the words. It was never enough, never enough packets, never enough words. in the end, i lost more from the process than from the pain.

teeth

on a cold hard sunday, i realized
my scars looked a lot like his teeth.

selfish

Selfishness. That's what I'm struggling with. I have been accused of being selfish. I have been called icy, hard, and volcanically self-contained. 

I've been called cruel, and unforgiving and unavailable. I've been called a butcher with a surgeon's touch—apparently I cleave hearts with practiced precision.

I do not mind being called cruel or clinical in my decision making. I know that I am clinical in my love, and diplomatic with my intimacy. But I do not want to be selfish. There is, I think, a distinction to be made between those of us who love completely, and those of us who want to save some for the next one. 

I'm oscillating between the two—on one hand, I want (I want I want I want) to be all glass and glowing bride; to blush red-gold under someone's gaze like I've swallowed the sun. On the other hand I am afraid of my own transparency—all glass breaks and all that glitters was once whole.

But to save some for the next one is to, inevitably, keep some from the one right now. The force of pulling back doors that say “push” is only going to break them. I don't know what's worse: pulling or pushing away. It all seems to end the same way. Reckless abandon or cautious dispensary—either way, every person I've loved is asking to barter: how much for one night of intimacy? How much for a decade? I'm no less of a prostitute if you pay me in gilded whispers. 

How much of myself do I need to mine to become selfless? If I give you everything, if I excavate my heart strip my body down to the bone, am I then selfless? 

Call me selfish, call me cold. Call me miser and call me shrew. 

Call me crazy, but I'd rather die warrior than martyr.