Oh there’s a lot of stuff I won’t talk about. They think me an open book because I talk about the details of the bad times with a laugh between my teeth. That the moon doesn’t affect my tides anymore because of how masterful I have become at communicating with the water inside me. They’ve called me desperate, damaged, loud, but I know none of that is true. Well, maybe the loud part. But I have spent so much time with my mouth closed, malnourished, and shrinking shrinking shrinking. I am learning to become big again away from the shadows. I know that I deserve to exist bathed in bright golden light and that it is here and has been waiting for me. But I need you to understand: do you know how many times my body has been used as if there wasn’t a soul attached to it as if I wasn’t in the room even though it was my house, as if pain and pleasure were entirely synonymous without any grey area or discussion or let’s be real, sometimes consent, the blood I shed, the dirt I’ve crawled through, the versions of myself I had to kill to maintain preservation, the amount of times the rawness of my reflection reduced me to rage and hot tears. Don’t fucking talk to me about sacrifice, about work, about what it means to remain tender and open when everything including your own brain is trying to kill you. It takes grit, understand? I am not all glitter and pink and soft things and you wouldn’t like me if I were. You like me because of my complexity, my depth, the way I look at you like I could swallow you whole. You're curious about the extent of my hunger- so am I. I may play confident at the bar or party but being in your arms is an entirely different story. You like the darkness of my poetry, the secrets I keep, the way I laugh at my own jokes. You like me. And I am not scared about this obvious fact. Even though it is so scary to pull my heart out of my chest and present it prettily for your consumption and I have scars from the last time and I also know you are not asking me to but I would like to. Feel safe enough to be considered again, I’m not even talking about love. I have walls and so do you and they move and shift and I am always wondering about their structural integrity. I’m not a contractor or an architect but I feel pretty confident in our ability to discover the materials of the things that are keeping us from enjoying a life in the sun, slow mornings, your hand on my thigh as we drive.
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