I can see the thoughts sparking around in your head.
For you, I’m within reach.
For me, you are too close.
I can’t breathe with your thoughts in front of me.
Your desires are too close.
But you will forever deny them for the sake of safety.
And I cannot stand it.
I cannot stand you.
The big pile of want and never will be is between us.
Like being near a live wire, it is dangerous and alluring.
We can’t touch each other but are still too close.
Close enough to catch fire and be burned.
Standing on the shore, surrounded by ice resembling glittering broken shards of glass, I listen as the water creaks and moans.
The Sun rises.
Pink, purple, and orange across the blue and white Sky.
I breathe in, grateful for the Earth’s assurance that the demons I battled in the depths of my darkness last night are leaving me.
I hold my breath and watch.
The magic of the Sky opens wide and releases me.
No longer living breath to bottle, I welcome the light.
It is the softness I remember most.
The way you drew my hand into yours, a living, active motion. Moving your fingers against mine. Tracing my palm with your thumb.
Your eyes were kind and gentle. Blue and deep. Soft in their gaze.
For those moments my world was made of curves instead of edges.
So it is the softness I remember when my days are hard.
You were my favorite. I hoped you would stay.
That you would let me keep loving you.
I wish this time you were my reward for a lifetime of caregiving.
Mine to keep as a gift for teaching so many men how to accept love.
I wish you were staying instead of leaving and taking with you the magic I showed you.
But here I am again, alone and starting over.
The quiet hush of Winter surrounds my life.
I feel invisible.
I wander around my home, touching things to ground me and assure myself I exist.
I am cold, down to my bones.
In those moments, I desperately long for the warmth of the Sun on my body.
I look out the window into the gray and think of hot sand on my skin.
The sounds of Water and laughter and the taste of summer fruit in the heat.
The Wind blows outside, spinning the tops of snowbanks into the Air and I am sharply aware of the depth of my cold.
I remember sitting next to you, holding your hand, during a moment of calm after the storm.
I quietly asked you why?
Why do you hit me? Why are you so cruel?
I remember you cried and said you were sorry.
You gave me a list of excuses for your rage.
Some of them were even about me.
But it was never really about me.
What you didn’t say was you were sad and sacred.
That I was an easy target for all the hurt inside you because I was trapped. And I loved you.
I loved you, in good times and in bad.
There was more to our story than the times you left me crying in the corner, bruised and battered.
We did laugh We had fun. Sometimes.
But mostly, I lived in a state of terror, just waiting for the next time you lost control.
You took everything and left me with nothing.
You harmed me in ways I am still discovering.
Time has passed since I left.
I am no longer in a constant state of hypervigilance. I no longer dread you walking through the door, and I no longer worry that anything I say could release an onslaught of anger from you and send me reeling, bloodied by your words or your fists.
Because you are no longer there.
But fifteen years was a long time to live with your abuse.
I still find myself in that place from time to time.
And I will forever be trying to heal the brokenness.
How do you feel about me in someone else’s arms?
Knowing another man lays inside me?
His mouth, his body pressed against mine, his hands all over the places you once touched.
How do you feel about someone else loving what you once had?
This world is so hard.
But the place between us. The place where our hearts and bodies touch is so soft.
That is the place where our love lies.
And love, real love is rare and holy.
We treat it with reverence, foreheads touching, breath aligned, and hands clasped together.
Our hearts hold the space.
In this place, it is only you and me.
I love making you blush with intimate words whispered in your ear.
The power to make you tremble.
You knowing my carnal expressions quietly spoken are promises kept between us.
Laying in the snow, held by the cold depth of the bank,
I look up.
Big sparkly flakes are falling from the sky.
The wind blowing them in a silent choreographed dance.
Mesmerizing.
They melt on my face and wash away the tears.
This place, the place I call home, is magical.
I soften into the moment and breathe.