I remember loving things. I remember loving the dance of leaves and their shadows. I remember loving an artist’s singing. I remember listening to the harmonies for the first time. The double voiced thing that danced with the drums and the guitars. Dancing. I remember loving dancing.

I have a fire in my heart. When I was a child, I was handed a bucket of water. “Pour it.” they told me. I knew what this meant. “No” I said. And I was overpowered, and it was sudden, and no part of me was left dry. They taught me to extinguish myself, and today I still grab the bucket, and when I bring it to my hot, fiery heart, my eyes still widen.

The silence which would come after
the breaking of that seal
was my babe in her being;
The dreading and the awe; The christening in God’s grand ritual.
She stands at the mouth of this awful plan
My babe, handing the trumpets with solemn apathy.

   And the rivers of blood are my babe,
       And the plagues that punish are my babe

And nothing comes of begging,
Of pleading for some undeserved mercy
Because my babe is the birth,
and my babe is the end.

My babe is the wing, the fall doused in sleep
And the euphoria of sin, ephemera of earth
The dying and rising of the tides, their gentleness and their bringing.
The silence and the peace as it turns to blood;
The wave’s wine-loved singsong.

My gentle lover, who held my hand and led me into the waters.
My muddied huntress
who would **** the woodland babes
with dagger and ruthless compassion
to feed me rabbit stew
those sickly nights.

God, God, Were you not all merciful and good?
Release her from your taking,
Drop her from your unforgiving claws,
You; Beast of my life, Slithering King.
There is no end truer than that which you’ve done to me–
Your measly bringing of the end times
shines dim beside the fires of my grief.

Take me to the end of the earth,
Take me into your everlasting loving
My sun, chosen thing of God
who looks at me from a dark cloud;
My babe, In her solemn apathy,
My babe, In the quiet glistening of
her wet cheek.

O Lover, full of grace,
Death servant and God-taken;

       I’ll die. I’ll die.

    My babe, the Lion.
  My babe, the Lamb.

Divinity is not in my suffering but in the opening of my arms when it walks, all definite and sturdy, like those perfect marble statues, towards me. Yes, to me, crying is holy. When I weep, I am closer to God.

I’m sitting with my mouth a little open, my head tilted from the weight of summer. I’m sitting in the shadow of someone’s love, I’m sitting in this room, always this room, always some room. I never leave. I am never let out. I put a pillow on the chair so it’s more comfortable. I sit in the shadow of a better life, this blackness, where there is only rage and pity. A stagnancy that kills you slowly. Every good thing I could be is always walking in front of me, and I walk and walk, and I’m only ever in it’s shadow. I told someone I was going to die one of two ways: I’m going to disappear into my mind, and you’ll wave your hand in front of me, and I won’t answer. Or I’ll jump somewhere, and during the fall, I’ll love the wind and the world, until the moment it all goes black. I don’t know if she understood. So I sit. In the shadow of all good things, I sit. I put a pillow on the chair. I cry.

I’ve never failed so many times before. I’m failing, and failing, and failing. And it’s so strange, because punishment never comes. “I’ve failed” I say. “I know what they think of me now” I say. And I ready myself for the blow, and then the grief of being too much work for a person. But punishment never comes. You refuse it, and it confuses and upsets me- this natural order made obsolete, this broken vase a thing I once knew. “Here,” you tell me, and hand this precious thing to me; “There was always a flower inside it.”

August cools us down. It brings us back from the lazy chaos, the dreamy haze of high summer. It asks us to lay down our learned lessons. Look at them carefully and gently. What has the heat shown you? What does your softened heart now know?

I can only love you in a poem. In some fantastic little story. If I loved you with my hands, I’d press too hard, and in my inexperience I’d hurt you. In my desperate needing- like fearful animal to nurturing woman- I’d hurt you.
Have you ever seen someone so robbed of humanity?
Have you ever seen someone like me?

I want to ask someone,
“Will you love me, even like this?”

I want to hear them say yes. I want to then say,
“And when I finally open my heart, and all I can offer you are the broken things inside it, will you love me then?”

I want to hear them say,
“How could I refuse the love you give me?”

I want to hear them say,
“The love you give me is good. No matter the wounds your heart carries, no matter the state it’s in, the love you give me is good. All your love is good.”

July kisses me and I kiss it back,
kiss its last days away.
Somewhere, in a room, in a bed,
your t-shirt clings to muscle,
to your skin.
And I want to be beside you,
closed inside the locket of your arms,
even now, even now,
in the heat of mid summer.

Love takes me, it takes me.
It washes over me and I drown in its tenderness, in this kindness you show me. Love touches me and I drown in the possibility of it, in the mere thought of it.
I thought I was done with this.

What are you made of.
What cursed god-thing courses through your veins, that it bleeds into every one of your words–
  
   hi, honey

I had convinced my heart to still itself whenever it remembered you.
How does all my heart-work (weeks of it!) go to waste
the moment you say hello,
to me.

Dear God, Angel, don’t tell me anything else,
you must know by now, if you do,
I’ll show you this mess, this weeping, this euphoria,

   this foolish hope,
and my sweet, grand fear of it.

God lied. Women were born from the earth.
Crawled from the sea. Risen from your lake in the wood.
They were made from the dead fires of earth; formed from the ash,
Running, Screaming towards God their name.

It was man who came second.

It was man who was God’s afterthought,
pulled from the side of the almighty Woman.

My eyes are painted red. Hearts over both of them, dripping into my mouth after some frantic, vicious event with you. How I long for this again, my fierce lover, how I long to **** with you again.

You know death when it touches you. It's a ghost that's been hunting you for years. Some months ago it finally found you and it breathed a sigh of relief. So elusive and mysterious a thing to it you were.
To it's utter dismay, upon finding you it discovered that taking you meant being faced with its first nightmare in a very, very long time.

You will not die.
Like absolute divine royalty, like hellish blood-dripping woman, you refuse Death.

I saw it happen once. You looked down your leg, an immortal Lion, long mane flowing in midnight wind, your silent rage greater than God's own.
And there it was, a ghost with its pride weakened, its body strewn hopelessly at your feet. Its hand on your thigh, pleading.
Death begs to take you now. You've crushed its dignity so.
You only stare it down, the glint of your fang scaring it into submission once more. It loosens its grasp on you, and when its hand falls, so too does its vacant eyes. Death stares at the cracks on the floor.

And you?
You are Lucifer victorious, standing with his foot on the defiled corpse of God.

You held my hand. Touched it, caressed it.
Mindlessly, I let myself be felt by you.
Secretly, somewhere in my heart I was dancing.
I woke again, like I had before.
From closeness of you. From a dream.
From tenderness.

I’m keeping a secret.

The secret is what I dream. The secret is what I yearn.

The secret is in sea foam,

in its cradled growl of the thing from the depths,

and the treasure it guards.

The secret is in the feather of angels’ wing

and in every painting of them.

It’s in their golden splendor, in their vanity,

in the sins behind their teeth.

My secret, my tender little flame,

the thing I can’t yet let loose

lest it run to you.

It's so strange. A pain comes to me, and I think: I'll feel it, because this is what one should do with pain. This is what one does with emotion.
And once I feel it, I find that it's gone- away and done with, walked into a mist in the wood.
And there it all is, beyond the threshold of trees-- all this pain I once felt, and have let roam free as deer one can never encounter again.

I’d love you.

You, blood-drenched horror,
God-weeping and golden.
You, who’d make me see love in all its terror.
You, the treasure sitting at the bottom
and the thing that guards it, its body a mile long, it’s mouth of teeth.
You, the wet world around it.
My greatest fear. Sea of my life,
You’d be.

Darling devil; some endless Light
Who would take from me
The sun in my mouth, and turn it back into moon
And leave me as I should be
On forest ground
Howling into the night;
A freedom in my suffering.

And I’d tame with my hands
That burning thing inside you
that boils the lake water around you,
Rage and Steam in calm air.

I’d love you and love you
Until the world is all tattered and green
And I’ll love you still
when the green takes you with it.

I’d love you with whatever I have.
With nails, with teeth, with shaking hands,
With the struggle of the bloodied bull,
with its one good eye.

I’d love you, all measly and small,
I’d love you and in my loving I’d grow
And I’d become light, Light like your heart, Light like the kindness in your eyes, and I’d stand next to you
And we’d glow.
In my learned own-loving, in our own-loving, we’d glow.

I don’t know where to put this pain. It feels like an injustice that I can only hold it in my hands, a little puddle I pour to the earth, until the next one forms again.
It feels like an injustice too, what’s happened. I was willing to sing myself to you, all bare and defenseless, but could not undo the ritual I had been taught to perform since I was a baby. I couldn’t do it in time.
That awful ritual- the one where I held up a mask to my face and said, “Here I am, it’s me. Someone like you, a face you’ll not scorn.”

Tenderness is your weeping, Love is in the wetness of your cheek, I have heard you begging yourself for the forgoing of your defenses. If love is the path you reach for, your legs only need walk it. My dear, abandon hardness. Become the light love is drawn to.

It occurs to me that I cannot move forward while existing in the hellscape that is the absence of love.

I’ve never received love. I’ve always been a stranger to it. Very rarely have I received the smaller parts that make up the whole that is love: things like justice, recognition, trust and commitment are things that have always been absent in my relationships with others and myself. My mother kept me isolated from the world because she lacked the empathy to understand that I was a being separate from her. I was, in some quiet, unconscious way, a burden to her. From her I knew care, but little more. I was fed, given a room with a bed, even video games and a computer. I was kept alive. But I knew nothing of emotional connection; there was no recognition in what she would call her loving. I was never seen, only kept. When the cruelties of the world outside our home beat my body and mind until something cracked, and they reached inside of me to find my innocence and steal it, there was no justice. Justice, which is a necessary component of love. She would punish me instead, by making it clear how disgusting I was to her- I, who was six, and eight, and thirteen- for seeking out things I was being taught were love, or she would remain quiet in her words and actions. Adults all around me abused me. My only parent, teachers and relatives were all abusing me in a world where children my age were told adults were protectors, and teachers “second parents”, like my mother would tell me.

I don’t think it’s possible to heal without knowing love.
I’ve worked to “improve” myself- a word I’m now beginning to think should have been “heal”- for years. Obsessively, to a fault. Multiple times a day, I would write something new, a new note, something I’d realized I was doing wrong and needed “fixing”- a dangerous word when referring to the modification of the self.
This could be called care. But nothing else. Similar to how my mother cared for me but didn’t know (or would often refuse) to offer me the rest of the parts needed to form the whole that is love, I gave myself only parts of it. I didn’t love myself because I didn’t know how to. My definition of love had its foundations in the actions of my abusers. The love I gave myself was rendered unkind by the lack of my protectors’ understanding of love, their abuse, and what they taught me love was.

I worked so ******* trying to “fix” myself that this care became a kind of torture. I wouldn’t punish myself so much as I would work myself into exhaustion. It’s a subject too complex and full to delve into right now, but this, and every stressor in my life, was exacerbated by the fact that I am autistic. This is a definition I don’t entirely agree with but for the sake of conciseness I’ll say it– If you can imagine being born without a single tool to navigate the world, that is what autism is. I had to build much of what others know instinctively. This makes for an extremely confusing and terrifying childhood, even without abuse from an outside source. Due to the nature of autism, it can in itself be a kind of trauma. There are no known solutions to the issues it presents. In my rigorous self-studying (and observation of other autistic people I’ve known over the years), I’ve understood the core issues of autism and how to correctly- that is, naturally- arrive at the peace we so desperately need. I’ll write about it some day.

Autism made my life in isolation harder than it would be for those who aren’t autistic. Understanding the world without some kind of guidance was virtually  impossible for me. For a lot of autistic people, it remains impossible until death. I still need guidance in certain situations, mainly when in public or when feelings of stress cause regression, stripping me of my learned skills and pushing me into confusion and purely logic-based solutions (which only serve to offer relief in a short-term manner).

Only recently, within the last month, did I learn to approach self growth in better ways. Negativity is something I can now sit with, without fear of it. I listen to it, observe it. I always knew this is what should be done with feelings of negativity, but I wasn’t capable of it. I want to say that the only reason I became able to do this was because I was shown parts of love I had been refused all my life.
Recognition, justice, and a little bit of affection were all that I needed to move forward in my journey of becoming.
It was as if I had been waiting eagerly for years to know these fragments of love, so that I could finally work to modify the parts of me that needed modifying. The second I was shown this kindness, I felt I knew exactly how to use it. The gates had opened and I was sprinting, because finally, finally I could move forward. It was admittedly chaotic at first; I was overflowing with love in an overactive, confused state. The change for me was great and sudden, and difficult to manage. It was overwhelming, but I mostly settled into it after. Suddenly I was capable of accepting love, and was excited to give it. The kind words of strangers finally felt true; little positive messages left for anyone to read online were now a love I could accept and use. I looked through them and held their love in my arms, carrying it to my bed that day I remember feeling so sad and lonely. For the first time in years I wasn’t afraid of my sadness, of my loneliness, of my fear- of the results of my loveless life. I simply sat and cared for myself, and there was nothing lacking in my loving. I loved myself fully for one day.

The positive change in me that came from being given the fragments of love that had been absent all my life- justice, recognition and affection- lasted a month. Some part of me tells me that I should wait more to write about this, because right now is the end of that month.

The love has stopped, and I find myself in need of it again, and I’m wondering if I can survive by learning to give it to myself. Every time I wonder this, I think it’s impossible. That I’ll eventually reach that gate again, that my journey of becoming will inevitably stop. Self-love is made possible when we know what it is to be loved. I think this. I think this now.
Love cannot be built in isolation. I will need to be loved in order to continue loving myself. I’m too eager to continue my journey, I think. This is natural, but it leads to unpleasant things that might repel others and keep me from being loved. I’ve begged- an unbecoming, often disrespectful act. I’m desperate, but also unwilling to hurt anyone with my suffering.
It’s hard to know how to ask for kindness. It’s harder yet, as an autistic person. I want to ask for it, but something in me tells me doing this is rude. And the tension I feel from thinking this creates an unbearable stress as it grows into an unsolvable doubt: What about asking for something I need is rude? Is it possible to ask for fragments of love tactfully, without this rudeness? Is there something my autism isn’t letting me see?
There often is. The problem here then becomes, “I need a guidance most people do not need, and I know that asking for it is undesirable to others. I will be punished for needing.” Sometimes I don’t need this guidance. When I’m happy and safe, I can function independently more often. But happiness and safety are things one feels when loved. My dilemma is a paradox.

I’m tired of my loveless life. I wish for nothing more than to be able to love and be loved, because I am tired of lovelessness, because I am eager to know the terror of loving, eager to learn with someone to hold and be held, to commit love. I want to love and be loved because I am human, and because I think that at the end of lovelessness, there must be a kind of death, and I want so badly to live.
Perhaps if I weren’t autistic, my search would be less difficult and painful. I feel as if I am punished for needing, because most people do not need the things I need, and needing them is seen as a sign of rudeness, an inconsiderate nature or just plain incapacity, which are all undesirable traits.

My fear is to be undesirable for who I am. I can’t write it without crying. My fear is to be told I shouldn’t be touched because I can’t touch, that I shouldn’t be trusted because I can’t stop masking, that I shouldn’t be loved because I can’t love.
And I feel that all I can say is that I swear I can learn, if only you’ll give me the chance. I am willing to. And I’m sorry to beg, because I know it isn’t very good or beautiful, but please stay a while, so that I may allow myself to be defenseless and bare, like love requires one to be, like I long to be. If you must leave then go, but if you have the patience to spare, please use it on me. Because if at the bottom of lovelessness, there is only some death, I don’t want to ever know it. I don’t want to get any closer to it.

My babe is so sweet, My lover sings soft.
He sings soft to me, can turn water to wine
with his honeyed voice.
He sings his nigh notes loud,
and I catch a glimpse of it- what hides just under his tongue,
What he unleashes only under God’s tired eye.

There is a lake in the wood.
He crawls to it some nights, in secret, my Singing Babe
And when he growls his consonants into the water,
The ripples travel the mud, and creatures twitch their ears
to my lover’s noise.

Hide from me, baby.
I know you pray, my soft-sung lover,
sin’s reckoning won’t find you there.
I’ll hope you come to me one night, wet with some untamed fear.
The roar of my dark thing’s heart
would be so sweet to hear.

The water’s moon is a halo all around him,
As water dances to my boy’s rumbling, like crocodile song,
Like the bellowing of a woman wrapped in euphoric sin.

In my dreams I hear a wounded Lion
misplaced in some wood, and when I find it lying there,
a lamb turns to me slowly
with a mouth full of blood.



-

I know where I need constructing. I know where I need loving. I know which parts need the warmth of my own hand, and which parts need the warmth of another’s. I’m not some irreparable disaster. I need to know kindness. From my own mouth. From another’s.
It is only the possibility of never receiving it, that sends me into a panic I almost can’t come back from. That swirling despair, like a whirlpool that can only pull you into black, filling your lungs until you die. Lovelessness. And you desperately try to cling to the surface, but your hand sinks again and again. It’s this that I do, only instead of the surface, I reach to find that warmth, the one I’ve only known the absence of. I am teaching myself to catch my own hand when I reach out, but this doesn’t always save me. I think I’ve exhausted myself. My arms are tired. I worry that if nobody is there to reach for me when I reach for them, that I will drown.
I wonder if loving myself won’t last. I wonder if it is worth it, the attempts to soothe myself, to bring myself back from whatever despair has me in its grasp. I wonder if isolation will finally **** me one day. If trying to survive alone is a good thing at all, when what I need is the warmth of another. Their patience and kindness. I wonder if I’ll finally give up one day, and let myself drown in that lovelessness, and find that the only thing at the bottom of the sea is death.

What has happened to me?
I’ve been acted upon;
brought to my own becoming.
On my knees
before an altar that holds me
and all I have been.
And I’m praying, God, I’m praying,
agape in my own-loving, in my still-shock;
Defenseless to my god and silent.

My darling thing. My precious lover.
Lake-born, Blood-stained, Wrath-filled.
My babe, She who howls inward.
Whose violence I hold in my hand
and tame with tenderness.
My sun, brightest light I know. My thing of nature, earth-loved;
My angel. My divinity. My god.




-

My love for you is this: I am ready. Water me; I promise to flourish. Even if it’s only a drop. I will always know exactly where to put your love. I will always know exactly how to spend it. And even now, that I am underneath rot; something that has grown on me, that has me in its grasp, weary and slow, I promise to bloom.
Sink my head in your waters. I’d never drown with you. Only grow. Only become.

I miss you. You, a mystery— You who are something in flames. You who are something risen from the waters. You, and you, violently winged and tender. I think of you and it isn’t you. I think of you and you are a memory underwater. A blurred face. Something in flames. You, and not. I miss you.

Your peace must be achieved not through violence but with it, Alongside it. Wield your violence without fear of its power. Love must know pain. Rebellion must know blood. Peace must know violence. You have nothing to fear when kindness sings behind your battle cry.

I’ll tell it to you, my greatest fear.
I’ll tell it to you because I must say it. I must say it.
It is the refusal to be forgiven for my still-bleeding,
for the color of me, for the rivers of blood
that might spill out of me.

It is the coming of the moon
unchanging in its quiet loving
the waking of the sun,
fiercely singing in its ever-burning,
and their never-meeting
never-touching.
It is God’s demanding of this.
It is nature’s demanding of this.

It’s to sit and look past some baby’s eye
as she tells me with her softest breath,
“I can’t love you. Not like this.”
because it echoes, and it echoes,
The moon and sun in their never-meeting,
the joys of life inevitably ever-fleeting,
Nature. Nature. The will of God:
“Nobody will want me.
Not anymore.
Not like this.”

I would steal the words from Andrew H.
to say my soul was born in cold rain
and your kindness to sit with me while I wept;
stumbling across the words
shown something so known to me
I the Lamb, now bowing before its Lion
I build me, my paradise.
Was the first light I’d ever known;
Sunlight
       Sunlight
             Sunlight.




-

It becomes clear to me that growing into an adult has little to do with leaving anything behind, and more to do with the responsibility of knowing.
Forget your worries about keeping your soft animals. You can keep them. You can keep your colorful things. But think: what will you do with what you know?
This is the real question.

You are an adult, which only means that you have lived long enough now that you must decide what to do with your knowledge. It is your duty.
What will you do now that you have seen the world is not kind? Will you be kind in its place? Will you be kind to everyone you meet? Or will you hoard your kindness, like a tired dog whose fur has fallen in all its scars?

What will you do, now that you know fear and all its soldiers? Will you hurl rebellion in a glass bottle to those who weaponize it? Will you scream back at it when it tells you to silence yourself? Will you hold the other’s hand, when they tell you quietly, that they too are afraid?

What will you do, now that you know love and all its terrors? Will you embrace it? Will you work to move through it? Will you want it even after it shows you your lover’s own fears? Will you learn to swim in it, so that you don’t drown like children do?

What will you do now that you know suffering, despair, the state of all around you? Will you sit and watch? Will you turn away from duty, to keep your soft animals close and sigh, “I’m nothing but a pretty babe in the wood”? Or will you pick up your fists, and march towards that which needs changing, with all the colorful things in your pocket, and the soft animal, sleeping safety back home?
What will you do, darling babe, now that you’ve grown, now that you know?

Decide. That is what the adults must do.

"Oh Charles, Oh dear friend... what shall I do? She is somewhere far and I can't reach her hand. I can't tell her with my mouth the things I need to say. Only though letters- through ink and paper can I say anything at all. And I'm no good with words, Charles! Why, I- I'm only an animal, a dog who will lick you and look at you with those full moon eyes to tell you that it loves you, and, and I can't take it anymore, Charles. I miss her. Oh I shall go mad if this continues!"

"I thought the wait would make you king, Laurence? What's changed?"

"..."

"Why don't you tell her?"
"Tell her. Tell her what?"
"Tell her the way you feel."
"My dear Charles. It... it isn't yet time. I've barely spoken a word to her. She’d think me truly mad then!— if I were to tell her about my childish yearning.
She's been ill, you know. Away, being taken care of by those blessed enough to know her. And me, I'm nothing to her yet; I am ******, too young and dry still, without the waters of her baptism. Oh if only she were near..."

"You'd fumble about and tip the tub with all its water, you would!"
"Oh hush..! At least then she'd see me. In all my fumbling and stuttering, Charles. She would see me."

"That she would, dear friend. That she would."

God, I’ve turned stupid with the thought of you.
Look at me- desperate for something that, if it were even possible, would happen only in a future so far I cannot even see it with my telescope. I write without thinking. I think euphorically about nothing. I lie. I give too much of myself to an audience that doesn’t know me. I beg, I breathe hard, I stop myself. Truly, truly, I’ve become stupid. I don’t even have a telescope.

I taste the honey;
You pour it on me
And you lick me like you have the hunger of an ancient thing.
{          }
Impatient for wholeness.
{          }
Hungry for hunger.

My darling, if you’d have given me just a drop, I’d have changed just the same. How easily we grow from the dark, when watered with kindness.

Angel, you’ve got me crawlin’, beggin’.
Throw me your crumbs, I’m a dog at your feet.
And I’ll howl when you leave, that sweet song o’ lone.

And she doesn’t know it.
She doesn’t know it.

But when you talk, I listen for the lick o’ your lips, the pause when you swallow.
And it’s so good, baby; the wait to know you, the wait to show you, the marks I’d love to leave you.
I’ll sit n’ wait. Sit n’ wait.
Sit, lie down, roll over.
When you walked away, you pulled my chain too.
When you walk away, you pull my heart with you.

Woof, baby. I’m nothin’ but the dog at your doorstep.
Drenched and hungry. Say somethin’ for me.
N’ my ears’ll perk up, and you’ll see my tail wag.
This dog’s got tooth, but honey, his heart’s trained for you.

You’ve got me crawlin’.
And when you leave, I’ll howl to you, that sweet song o’ lone.
Because she doesn’t know it, but she’s got me with hearts in my eyes,
and tongue lolling out my mouth.
All I am’s just dog, beggin’,

and I’d never known that trick before you.



-

“I’ve only seen her, Charles. Like a shooting star, I’ve only seen her. But I’d be a king amongst kings to subject myself to that arduous task— of knowing her, and letting her know me. So that we could, some day, and only if she too desires me, arrive at the gates of love.”

“And what about doing that would make you a king, Laurence?”

“Oh don’t you know, Charles? The wait to reach her is as golden as any king’s riches,”

And here, he turns to look at him and smiling, baring teeth and pride, tells his dear friend,

“and would make me twice richer.”





.

My lover is soft. My lover is gentle.
My babe, she holds me like a dying child, and when I ask her,
           “Am I taking this from you?”,
                                    she tells me,
                                            “No. I am giving it to you.”

I feel tired and small. Like I’ve disappointed you. You, who know nothing about me, except that I may have been good, but am now decidedly too small, too little, too little.
And how pathetic of me, to think any of me matters to you in this way. Yes, how small. How very small.

I’m desperate to be held by you. I’m desperate to love. I’m desperate to know care and connection- it’s why I say so many empty words. Desperation. I press my hands on you and you step back. “Touch softy.” you tell me. I press my hands on you and you step back. How long ‘till I learn to love right, how long ‘till I learn to speak my heart to you, to anyone?





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I am no one when I speak. I am only me when I am silent. I am only me when I cry my words into paper. Let me speak to you in this way, so that you know me, so that you see me! Why is it so ludicrous a thing, to sing my thoughts to the world, to speak in poetry to you? Would you let me? Would you let me? Oh, Would you prefer it?



.

There is no loving without wickedness.
There is no loving without rivalry.
Chase me. Fight me.
The sting of the sword announces the winner; be sure to kiss me after.



.

And what will you do to me, in the narthex of God’s palace?
What Terrible Thing will you become,
unto me, and before the eyes of God?

The saints buried below will hear our loving, and they’ll thank us surely,
For what good catholic enters a church
and knows to offer themselves to God
the way you offer your lips to mine?

In cathedra sits you, a creature so mighty.
The only proper throne.

O divine Beast, so wicked you are in your loving.
I kneel before you;
Cleanse me of Godly sin, O babe o’ mine—
Unbuckle and Feed me your Wine,
so that I may know, with every inch of my tongue
your everlasting paradise.

It is the time to weep. It is the time for sorrow. Watch the dog howl into its darkness- learn to do the same.
The heart is made sweeter through its bleeding; and by God, you must accept that.

When all becomes heavy, and you’ve made yourself so small that your pleas are like the voice of a mouse, remember: The sword must go through the heart, and you are to relish in this sweet ache, forever and ever, and that is a kind of survival. And when all is still heavy, and your pain is not the kind that will set you free, do not shun the hand of your loved one. For there is a kind of heart that can only be held with two hands. Both of them cannot be your own.

Cut my jaw with your lip, burn me with your blessed touch. Poison me with that silver tongue o’ yours, good God, preach to me your sweet loving.
Drip your name into my mouth, and I’ll swallow it all.



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