In the absence of purity, darkness must slither; and it is no choice we make that desolation shall loom. Suffering blazes its trail from the belly of our self-constructed hells deep into the cores of our most valued truths, but uncertainty, insecurity, and inferiority need not wither so that we may bloom.

It is only within the light that we allow ourselves to frolic; and so amidst pain, we often feel obliged to shrink. Whatever else remains should be placed in the unruly space that spans between self-love and our ugliest moods. But what if a force exists woven into the binding between darkness, light, and even the in-between too? Its mere existence would prove more to life than dyads and whatever ends up filed between two such extremes. So perhaps we can be more than good, evil, or the gray morality that exists in between. Perhaps we could be the binding energy beneath it all, ever unknown, unsullied, and unseen.

Trust this power that you hold the next time good versus evil looms over you. Even when there is no choice to be made and you are expected to simply accept the obvious truth, remember that you can be the force which touches right, wrong, and uncertainty all the same. Like purity, like darkness, like everything that's anything (and even nothing too)... we, also, may slither. We, too, may loom. So if we are not This despite existing there, and if we are not That despite embodying it too, then we can be anything we so choose.

It need not be good versus evil, including the varying senses of self which exist in between. It—and I mean all of it—could just be you.

Let me be not the bitter taste on your tongue
that tells of horrors already seen
and somehow still yet to come.

Let me instead be the sweet remnant of your favorite tea
of which you have not tasted in many moons
but still yet remember how to love.

Think of me as a fond memory in the making,
and hold onto me as though your memory is fading.
Do not forget how to love me.

Drink of me as though you have been thirsting for years;
and be imbued with neither my pain nor your strife
but, rather, that which no longer evades us—
lap gently at my undying need for your touch,
and let me ease your rising fears.

I am here.
Let me be here.

I long to know you
in the same intimate ways that you know yourself.
I desire to unfold you
in a way that I have never needed to unwind anyone else.

As it becomes clear
that you do not yet know this person I am so determined to love,
I begin to fear
there is no space for true intimacy to blossom between the two of us.

Go bravely where you have not yet thought to go.
Show yourself a whole new world.
Meet yourself in the planes of the great unknown.
I will be there as you unfurl.

Your voice is like a wash of warm summer rain,
pattering quietly into the depths of an endless night.
It crescendoes and falls off in soft waves,
soothing me deep down into my roiling core.
Something about you, even on your most dismissive days
continues to feel just so inexplicably right.
How can I find myself passed over by your gaze,
and yet be left wanting for absolutely nothing more?

If you were the rotten apple of a loved one’s eye,
to leave you in the dust would be my swift advice;
for you nurture me like a drought nurtures a thirsty crop,
which is to say that you dare not spare a single drop.
No, you bestow the taste of nothingness upon my thirsty tongue.

You could be the thunderstorm to quench my desperate soul,
and yet you leave me empty so that you can remain full;
and despite the predictability of your inevitable departure,
I find myself reaching out as you move farther and farther.
Yet, I stay desperate for just a drop of you upon my cracked lips.

When I hear you speak to me so softly,
I am drawn to you like a moth to a flickering flame.
Although you have never truly fought for me,
I still wish the summer nights would never come to an end.
I watch your gaze repeatedly pass over me,
despite the passionate way I call out for you by name.
Perhaps the autumn season will be kinder to me,
at least until the summer rains cycle through once again.