I'm a quiet woman.
A dangerous one at that.
Give me love, and it's dangerous
for a woman like me.

I don't burn men;
I don't provoke women.
I don't mount weights on my shoulders,
I don't move castles just for myself.

I'm a quiet woman.
A dangerous one,
that once you give me love,
I will swallow lit matches
into my gas-filled lungs
and breathe fire
to my terrible world
to burn, burn, burn
and rub ash on my skin,
hoping it will fix my aching heart.

Hope peace for a dangerous woman like me.
Hope nothing else will fall apart.

Suddenly, there's more than distance and heat. There's your heart and your soul.

Inside your embrace, and your thrumming flesh. There's more, there's more, I want to know.

I've met him twice; for months; and now years, into jubilees.
His name is Gabriel, and he means regret (in the language my heart only began to speak after him).

The way I know him, sinks deep into my soul like a splinter, hurting me more as he burrows. He refuses to love; is willing to be cared for. Never returns, doesn't even borrow, but nonetheless, he takes, and takes, and takes. He is a selfish man, the regret I've named Gabe.

We once held hands, and when I looked into his eyes, I poured my soul into the void he called his heart. And he took that love-and took it all, all, all and then gave it away.

My heart learned how to write songs because of Gabe. It broke, and it learned, and it began to write as if the endless words I wrote were expectant of the love he never gave; for the hurt he always seemed to be generous upon.

And I drank it all up, with a pinky held high, and he was not made of the substance I thought him to be.  But Gabe was a lesson, was an epiphany, was an age-old history (of aeons of regret).

Yet, he was once the substance that had made me.

A bitter heartbreak over a cup of tea.