I live between verbs.
I make and I am made.
I hold, and I learn the discipline of yielding.
People mistake this for balance.
It is not balance.
It is fluency.
I know how to arrange a room
so another person feels brave inside it.
I know where pressure steadies
and where it unravels.
I know how to witness becoming.
What I do not know—
or perhaps have forgotten
is how it feels to be the site of that attention.
To be studied without extraction.
To be shaped without being useful.
hooks said that love is not a pose
but a daily labor of care.
That ********** is not power,
and submission is not erasure,
unless consent is replaced by fear.
I'm practiced in this lesson outwardly. Inwardly, I am still waiting.
I want someone to look at me
the way an artist looks at wet clay...
not impatient,
not hungry,
but committed to what could emerge
if they stay.
I want to be held long enough
to stop performing resilience.
To feel a voice close to my ear
say, not as praise, but as fact:
Look what you’re becoming.
Jhumpa would notice the quiet things:
the way I straighten the table twice,
the pause before I speak my own need,
the breath I release only when the door closes.
She would understand
that longing is not always loud.
Sometimes it sets the kettle on
and waits.
I am a switch
but not because I cannot choose.
Because I know intimacy is a dialogue,
and I am tired of monologues.
I am an artist,
and I am art that has not yet been claimed #with patience.
I do not want to be consumed.
I want to be regarded.
I want to be the muse
someone protects from hurry.
Someone works toward slowly and with intention.
Not because I am fragile...
but because I am worth
the time it takes
To do this well.
I am tired of being the architect of my own safety.
I want to be the field, not the fence.
Limón would look at these hands—
these hands that have become so good at holding,
and ask what they would do if they were empty.
She would remind me that even the trees
don’t apologize for the space they take
before they’ve even bloomed.
I want to be loved in the way of the horse:
with a hand that stays steady on the flank,
not to steer, not to break,
but to say, I see the heat of you.
I see the pulse in the neck.
I want to be a soul that is allowed to have a body.
To let the "fluency" fail.
To be clumsy, and unarranged,
and not returned
once I'm difficult to hold.
Jan 19
Jan 19, 2026 at 9:13 AM UTC
I live between verbs.
I make and I am made.
I hold, and I learn the discipline of yielding.
People mistake this for balance.
It is not balance.
It is fluency.
I know how to arrange a room
so another person feels brave inside it.
I know where pressure steadies
and where it unravels.
I know how to witness becoming.
What I do not know—
or perhaps have forgotten
is how it feels to be the site of that attention.
To be studied without extraction.
To be shaped without being useful.
hooks said that love is not a pose
but a daily labor of care.
That ********** is not power,
and submission is not erasure,
unless consent is replaced by fear.
I'm practiced in this lesson outwardly. Inwardly, I am still waiting.
I want someone to look at me
the way an artist looks at wet clay...
not impatient,
not hungry,
but committed to what could emerge
if they stay.
I want to be held long enough
to stop performing resilience.
To feel a voice close to my ear
say, not as praise, but as fact:
Look what you’re becoming.
Jhumpa would notice the quiet things:
the way I straighten the table twice,
the pause before I speak my own need,
the breath I release only when the door closes.
She would understand
that longing is not always loud.
Sometimes it sets the kettle on
and waits.
I am a switch
but not because I cannot choose.
Because I know intimacy is a dialogue,
and I am tired of monologues.
I am an artist,
and I am art that has not yet been claimed #with patience.
I do not want to be consumed.
I want to be regarded.
I want to be the muse
someone protects from hurry.
Someone works toward slowly and with intention.
Not because I am fragile...
but because I am worth
the time it takes
To do this well.
I am tired of being the architect of my own safety.
I want to be the field, not the fence.
Limón would look at these hands—
these hands that have become so good at holding,
and ask what they would do if they were empty.
She would remind me that even the trees
don’t apologize for the space they take
before they’ve even bloomed.
I want to be loved in the way of the horse:
with a hand that stays steady on the flank,
not to steer, not to break,
but to say, I see the heat of you.
I see the pulse in the neck.
I want to be a soul that is allowed to have a body.
To let the "fluency" fail.
To be clumsy, and unarranged,
and not returned
once I'm difficult to hold.
