This morning was made of conversations. Moments hard like brittle notes strung together on the palest thread of my hair. I was wanting to see eyes tonight, to have hands in a strong grip and hold them. I’ve sent them to bed, all of them, every last declaration of need and love and memory. I’m alone now, talking to myself with typing fingers, continuing my chains of thought. My forged links of words leading into sentences to reach for a hollow place inside me where fear lives, where rejection hides. I need to find all the questions I never look at, all the needs I’ve managed to shut away from myself. I need doors opened and breath flowing into me from another. There’s no such thing as this, there can’t be, there’s no way for my sciences to explain it. I can take you with me into my dreams, but I don’t know if you meet me there or if I create you. First there was a conversation, on-line discussion of intimacy from across city. Around the topic rambling hit with the scattershot shrapnel of direct questions. We never knew we were such a hot topic, something to decipher. There’s a low sweet tone in the voice of it, a quiet talk on the porch. I’m curled in your lap, you never knew what you mean to me. I thought I would politely sleep in comfort, fending off nightly inamorato by lightly remembering fine gossamer certainties. Then there was a phone-call. A drunken brawl of a phone-call, shattering with vulnerability. I suspect that someone realized tonight that they actually need me. Desire has flown into unknown territory on wings of steel. I have crawled under their skin and wear it now. They taste my name on their fingertips and I can feel them crying.
“My greatest hope for you is that you don’t have to choose.” We can all feel it. It’s permeating the air, infecting the cells. You’re Mine now, I’m sorry. You know I never meant for it to be this way. I’m sorry I have access you never gave me, that I can see the place you lived when you were sixteen. I’m sorry I know what happened to you in the dark. You know I won’t let it come true. It’s too soon for you to think about. You must give yourself grace. This is a declaration to match your own, the one you are scared to say out loud. I would wear your ring, but I’ll leave if I have to.
I have to keep you safe, even from fire.