There is little in this world that consistently causes our hearts more pain or which produces in us more need for forgiveness than rejection, especially from those whom it has cost us so much to love. It is universal anathema to the soul, and much of our lives can be unconsciously governed by the fear of it. So we find ourselves naturally asking, "Joy in the midst of rejection? Is that even possible?" Oh, yes! Not only possible but commanded of us who are believers in Christ. And not only commanded of us but ready to be gloriously bestowed on us like the most precious of pearls.

It's in the season of greatest rejection that we enter the season of greatest opportunity to discover the fullness of God's joy by discovering the fullness of His own heart. Walking in intimacy with Jesus through this searing pain may be one of the most priceless privileges of grace granted to us on this earth, for it opens up one of the widest doors for us to enter into the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, and there is no more obvious chance to die to ourselves and live for Christ than in that holy communion of suffering with Him.

It's there that we're most able to clearly see Him and best prepared to clearly reflect Him, and it's then that we're empowered to live our lives here on earth from the very throne room of heaven, seated in the resurrected presence of our Bridegroom, where the joy always runs full and over. So our deepest heartaches will turn to deepest joys when we embrace them for the sake of Christ, to gain Him and be found in Him, to know Him in intimate detail through excruciatingly sweet experience. We will discover that the Lord entrusts the most luscious of blessings and the rarest of secrets to the most desperate and thirsty of souls, and that He delights to place the loveliest of wings on the lowliest of worms.

The gifts of myrrh's sorrow which the Father pours into the vessels of our lives are poured first into the hands of His own Son and flow through His nail-pierced scars before they ever touch us. And as we choose to graciously receive them as such, we are filled up with Him and enabled to pour Him out into the lives of others, even those who continually scorn and despise us.

The gift (yes, gift) of rejection is the high privilege of being asked by our Commander to become His flag bearer, receiving the esteemed honor of marching beside Him at the center of the front line, into the heat of the battle and into the face of the "enemy" (the rejecter), armed with no gun and carrying only His banner of love over our head for all to see. It's a sacred invitation into a certain death for the sake of knowing His love more intimately and for the service of displaying it more gloriously.

And if tempted to refuse the privilege, let us remember these two things: this life is so much more freely, joyfully lived when we have finally learned to count ourselves dead to it and alive to Christ, and the flow of His agape love through us will only be as strong as what it costs us to demonstrate it. The greater the cost, the purer the love; the purer the love, the more we are made like Him; the more we are made like Him, the more attuned we will be to His own heart's breaking and to our own breaking of it.

Oh, that we might be purged of ever thinking again that our neglecting of His love does not matter to Him! May He cause our hearts to break and break until we see how much it does! May we know the world's rejection again and again until we are finally scoured clean of our own despicable tendency to reject Him in favor of all our worldly playthings! No lover has ever endured more rejection than our Lover at our own hands and by our own hearts. And no lover continues to love through rejection with the determination and desire, suffering and sacrifice, tenderness and tenacity of our own Bridegroom. Can we not endure whatever He has called us to suffer for Him? Can we not allow it to drive us more fervently to His heart?... Lord, capture us by Your mighty hand and consume us by Your mighty flame, and may we pant and pine only for You, for Your love sets us free to dance in the midst of the fire!

How humbling, mystifying and worship-evoking it is to realize that the One we have so grievously rejected is the same One Who so perfectly understands and longs to comfort our own heart's grief when we are rejected. And to not run to Him now for that fellowship of healing would be to reject Him all over again and to break His heart once more. What could hurt Him more than our stubborn resistance to share in both His sufferings and His comfort when there is so much joy and intimacy waiting to be had with Him? Whatever ache our own heart knows, however deep and scathing, it cannot compare to the ache of His own heart when we let anything pull us away from Him, for He is rightly EVERYTHING to us—Father, Husband, Lover, Best Friend, Brother, Confidante, Kindred Spirit, Counselor, Nurturer, Rescuer, Healer, Hero... Behind the pain of every rejection is a legitimate need or desire that He is waiting to fill in us, and we have to let Him get to it by dying to our fleshly ones.

Or do we suppose that we might ever find true and lasting joy apart from dying to ourselves and abiding in Him when He died so that we might fully live in the joy of that abiding? No, true joy will only follow abiding; abiding and dying walk hand in hand, and rejection throws open the door for all three. Man's rejection is central to God's wooing, for it shatters our false expectations of human love and stirs in our hearts the longing for a perfect one. So let us not shrink back fearfully from that which can do us such good and teach us to love as Christ has loved us. With renewed passion, let us ask Him to wrap every affection of our hearts more tightly around Him that every desire might be united with His own and that we might learn to love in a way that sets our lives and the world around us ablaze!

To be despised and rejected and, still, to love—that is the ultimate triumph of Christ in our hearts, for we are never more like Him, never more full of Him, never more surrendered to His heart and His work than when He pours out His love through us to those who will not love us back. When we can stand in the face of bitter, cutting words, contemptuous looks and shaming mockery and still love fiercely but with a gentle and quiet spirit, we will know without doubt that it is His Spirit moving gloriously through us... Lord Jesus, Who so willingly floods our hearts with Your most precious gift, Yourself (and You are Love!), teach us to ever know You more and to rely fully on the love You have for us and ARE for us in infinite supply. Teach us to feast on the abundance of that love, and let it flow freely out of us to the ones who would reject, scorn, mock and hate us, so that they too might one day taste and be consumed by Your perfect love which drives out all fear—Your infinite, immeasurable love which heals all wounds and fills all emptiness and gives meaning to all of our pain. You alone, O LORD, are able to truly and purely love through rejection, but You live gloriously in us, so unleash Your mighty waters through us. Your love is everything, for You are Everything!...

Our all-sufficient Bridegroom is able to work His agape love most perfectly in us when that love poured out to another is not ever reciprocated, for it forces us to finally let Him fill us with Himself alone and to rely completely on His love instead of on the love of another to meet our heart's deepest hunger. The need for His filling IS our deepest hunger, and so our soul comes most alive not when it is loved by our fellow man but when it receives and pours out Jesus' love to our fellow man, expecting nothing in return but more of Him. Thus His love is made complete in us whether they ever love us back or not, and the fear of their rejection is eventually driven out by His perfect and perfecting love.

Even if love is never returned...never even received...it is never in vain, for "love never fails." To love someone, though we mean nothing to them, may seem too cruel a burden for the heart to bear, but the only thing worse than not being loved is to not love, and so the greatest tragedy of love spurned or lost would be to stop loving. For to cease loving that which causes us pain would be to let the pain win, but for as long as we love, really love with Christ's own heart, no matter what else happens, we win.

Love without pain remains unproven and, therefore, is meaningless, but love through pain invokes nothing less than the miraculous and inspires even the incredulous. The purer one's love, the more pain it causes when it is rejected, but only continued love can redeem the pain of loving, and only a perfect Love can heal love's scalding wound; the more scalding the wound, the better primed it is to receive that perfect Love fully into it.

There is great romance to be found in unrequited love that keeps loving, though it is beyond any human emotion or fleshly capacity or mortal understanding. It is a most sacred mystery which cannot be grasped with the head or even the heart but only with the spirit, for it is a love whose connection to Christ remains unsevered. There is perhaps no intimacy to compare to it, for it drives us to Him like nothing else will. It is a love whose longing for the other gives us the greatest insight into God's own aching longing for us. Only when it has cost us everything to keep loving do we begin to understand the smallest fraction of the wildly extravagant love Christ has for us or of the brutally scandalous pain which it has cost Him, and it will leave us in utter awe of Him and in love with Him like we have never been before.

As our focus is turned more and more toward His love for us and toward all of our previous rejecting of it, we will come to clearly see that agape love and rejection have everything to do with the the hearts of the lover and the rejecter and nothing to do with what the beloved and the rejected have done or deserve. For obviously we have done nothing to deserve God's love and He has nothing to deserve our rejection, yet He never stops loving us and we keep rejecting Him in ways we can't even comprehend. No one has ever known more rejection than the only One Who is completely worthy of love. Every time we sin we reject Him in favor of something else, but still He loves us without fail and without end. He loves us because He is love and because He has chosen to set His love on us. We are absolutely and irrevocably loved and accepted in Christ Jesus, and nothing and no one can ever change or mar that love. Our identity is completely secure in Him simply because of Who He is and who He says we are to Him.

Therefore no amount nor depth of rejection by anyone changes anything about who we are in Christ or our worth to Him. We do not need any man's love or acceptance to validate our worth, for it has already been established in the heavenly realms by the only One Whose verdict carries any real and lasting weight. We are significant and precious and holy to God regardless of what anyone else thinks of us or says of us or does to us. What has their rejection got to do with us? Nothing, for we are His! We are chosen and we are beloved! And so we are freed from the fear of rejection when we see that it cannot define us or taint us in the sight of the only One Whose opinion or judgment matters. It's a glorious thing to finally care what no man thinks of us, only the Master, for then we begin to be free to love all men as He loves them and to pray with deepest sincerity, humility and fervor even for those who spitefully reject us.

And even for that one who has hurt us most deeply, who has crushed our heart and thrown us to the wind like chaff without so much as a glance back, we will pray, no longer with only a slight and distant hope that he would return to us but now with a passionate desire to see the prodigal return to the heart of the Father. We will pray, not with a focus on life with him but with a focus on life for him. We will pray for a total and glorious restoration of his life to Christ, even if we will never be there beside him to share in the fellowship and joy of his homecoming, even if we will never get to experience up close in this life the thrill of seeing the Lord make something beautiful yet of his ashes. And this may be the hardest and truest test of our love for him—this painful sacrifice of desiring his absolute best apart from us. It is a wrenching blow to our pride and to our will (not to mention our codependence), for we had so longed to play the Muse and to awaken that beauty in him. So we know we could never yearn or pray for this out of our own strength or wisdom; it is simply too painful to our flesh. We must be led into it and through every delicate step of it by our loving Redeemer, our Bridegroom, as if He were leading us out under a canopy of the starry host and into the most intricate and intimate of moonlit dances. And so we begin to pray and to dance...

But even wrapped in Jesus' arms we are clumsy, stumbling miserably over our own feet. The music is perplexingly unfamiliar and the steps wildly unpredictable, and our toes feel terribly pinched in these new shoes. Maybe this dance is just too hard for us. Maybe we are not yet ready. Maybe we should sit it out for now and try again later when our shoes are a little more broken in or when our heart is a little less broken apart. So we pull away...

But He tenderly beckons us back: Dear and beloved bride, broken-but-beautiful one whom I have made My own, do not push Me away now, not after I have brought you so far. I have many more secrets to share with you and so much more to show you of Myself. But you are not letting Me lead this dance, beloved. Why are you so rigid in My embrace? Why so worried over the next steps? Let go of everything and abandon yourself to My love. Enjoy Me...Follow Me...Lean into Me...Keep watching My face...Let Me move you however I desire us to go...Trust Me...Love Me. Shall we dance, then?

Yes, we shall and we do! As He draws us into Himself, into the prayer of His heart and the dance of His Spirit, and as we give ourself over completely to the impulse of His leading, the details of our words and the precision of our steps give way to the desire and passion of His will, and the pulsating of our heart swirls to the rhythm of His own. The further He pulls us into union with Himself, the more we find ourselves desiring this same intimacy-with-Him for the very one who has so badly hurt us, for we see how badly he himself is hurting without it. We realize now that his running away from us and toward another is just as much a reflection of his insatiable yet misunderstood craving for God as was all of our running toward our own idols (including him). Our soul aches for his redemption and his healing and for his lost sheep's heart to be brought out of darkness and into the marvelous light that shines from Jesus' face, that he might truly know the pleasure of knowing the One Whose pleasure he was created for.

Somehow, through this heightened and mysterious intimacy of prayer for him, we are now discovering a strange and new kind of intimacy with this very one whose intimacy had so often given us the slip, this one whom we had so long loved and lived with but failed to uncover at all, and the fresh wind of it drives us even deeper into the ache of God's own heart for him and for us. It is at the center of that ache that we are finally able to let go of the hurt and the man and leave the matter entirely in God's hands, understanding that the Shepherd's aching heart knows fully all whom He has chosen and will never stop dealing with or seeking after any of His own sheep. And so...


                        We release to Him with a heart of trust
                        This one whom we love and always must
                        We can let go the man and rest because
                        It's out of our hands and always was


But the dance, like the feast, goes on and on, and the more we dance and the more we feast, the more we heal. Our Bridegroom wounds us by His own providence but washes our wounds with His faithfulness and binds them up with His love. The wounds and their healing make us beautiful to Him. They teach us to know Him, to hunger for Him, to enjoy Him and to please Him. And they get us perfectly ready for that most glorious of dances and that most joyous of feasts which are still to come but, perhaps, much closer than we might dare to imagine. It is time to awaken, dear bride of Christ, and to break in our dancing shoes!

i want you to imagine standing in the middle of an already collapsing house, and having everything suddenly flip upside down; or after years of homelessness, picture yourself being told you had somewhere you could stay for good, only to wake up just before being handed the keys. these are some of dangers of making places out of  people.

1. don't ever turn a human being into a home unless you are prepared to be evicted without warning.
2. when you start to notice their arms taking the shape of a roof over your head, you have two choices: run, or wait for it to cave.
3. if they ask you to stay and burn with them, you have the right to say no.
4. it is not your responsibility to save anyone, and it is not your fault when you can't.
5. salvaging the photos from a house fire will only re-break your heart every time you pull them out to look at them.
6. when the basement floods, hold their hand.
7. if you are not a strong swimmer, remember that the difference between love and codependence is that one of then will drown you.
8. love will never drown you.
9. i knew this from the start but let you hold me beneath the waves in spite of it, just so you could stay afloat. i can't do that anymore.
10. i don't think i'll ever set foot on your hardwood floors again, but i'll pray that someone new moves in soon.

- m.f.

I watch you struggle day to day
  wanting more from your life
    but not knowing where to start
From your frustration comes my triumph
No longer need to make your problems my own
  and so I have grown

You've been holding onto rocks
to keep yourself
from being swept away
your whole life.
None of them
were strong enough
Until one day

You thought you found
        the one

It was big
and it was sturdy
and you clung to it
But it never
clung back.

Now you've been
clinging to this rock
for a very long time
and the scenery has grown old
You've seen all
the seasons
So
many
times.
But you are not drowning
for the most part
And will take this peace
over the treacherous currant
and all its dangers

any day.

Lately you've noticed

this rock does not seem
big enough
anymore.
Have the rough waters
worn it down
without you noticing
or
have you
impossibly
grown bigger?

You cling tighter.
The rock

does not cling back.

A particularly rough storm approaches
the water is
stinging
and bites.

Suddenly

Your rock has crumbled
out
from underneath you.
You cannot
grasp all the bits and pieces
and put them back
together again.

This throws you down
the crazy stream
You bash into boulders.
They leave
Deep cuts
and
Dark bruises

You somehow make it through
rapids
But try to grasp at small stones
Hope one
could be a steady friend

But nothing sticks.

You hold the small remnants
of your lost steadiness
so tight
your skin is bleeding
Even cling to grass and twigs
won't hold
you cannot control
your pathway
anymore.

You fear
a waterfall.

hello facebook friend,
girl who dated my first kiss
girl who strung him along
and later dated a good guy friend of mine
and he and i would laugh at your quirks
long after you two fell apart.

whenever i think of people who like having *** in rooms with mirrors on all the walls so they can watch themselves from every angle, i think of you.

whenever i think of wishy washy girls who string boys along because they're afraid of splitting up the codependence even though they don't have anything in common with him anymore, i think of you.

to you, on your wedding day.


may the odds be ever in your favor.

when i bought you a gift,
i didn't really think about it.
wrapped it in your favorite color and
marked it with your name and
realized
i don't know where you live.
its been three years since i last saw you,
a year since we last talked,
and all my new friends just remind me of you.
i almost called her your name the other day.
you acted like i was special, and i
pretended i didn't need you.
christ.
christ.
you promised that nothing would change.
you swore you would visit
(but then every time it seemed you would,
i found myself hoping
you wouldn't. i guess
it's lucky you never did)
sometimes i go a month without thinking of you (forgetting like i should)
and wake from a dream where we're
sitting on the edge of a wall,
three years younger than we are,
throwing rocks down steep slopes,
talking about
reflections on car doors,
melting in california sun.
i straightened you out
when boys left you tangled.
(i've never been in love)
you listened when i talked about
black cats and spirographs
and the way that we can never really touch anything
(i don't think you understood
even half of what i said but
you listened like i was spurting secrets of the universe in waves like
pay attention,
this one will be on the final)
you laid with me on hot sidewalks and then,
you left.
christ.
i thought i was always supposed to be the one who went south,
left someone behind,
wondering about me,
but here we are and still, still, even now
everyone i care about is just like you.
i went north but still even now,
i walk barefoot like the ground is hot and dry,
like it was back home,
like it's not wet from last night's rain.
i think you'd like it here, you liked fog better than i did,
you liked rain, you thought it was
poetic,
you thought colors looked better in the cold.
you liked the way your hair looked wet but hated the way your makeup would run.
you tried to grow closer but instead i would talk
about things that don't matter,
and honestly,
you shouldn't have expected any better from me.
didn't realize till you left that codependence
isn't something i
can avoid, i can only prevent you
from becoming as attached
as me.
can red threads work for friendships too?
sometimes i feel like it wrapped around my torso a thousand times over,
pinching the skin,
and only draped over your hand.
sometimes i feel like a dog with her leash tied to a pole.
i thought i was the one who was supposed to leave,
but christ,
i've always been bound by the border, i've
never been as transient as
i seemed.
that never stopped you.
nothing stops you.
(do i ever come to mind?
do you mention me to your new friends, am i
in any of the stories you tell them?
i don't tell my friends about you.
i'd just be ashamed
of still keeping your laugh in my mind.
i'd just be  jealous
that they know how to say your name)
i remember sitting with you on a wall,
watching heat mirages,
listening to the way you talk
and thinking of telling you things like
the way my parents don't kiss anymore,
the time my mom left in the middle of the night,
and i waited on the stairs under stars for three hours
while my dad told me to come inside,
and orion sat above,
and the driveway stayed empty,
and you turned to me and i made a joke about
nihilism.
you were so honest with me.
(i was honest too,
it's not lying
if you make jokes about how you really feel
it's not lying, it's just a comedy routine)
i think i'm a few years older than i'm supposed to be.
i should be able to move on from a  friend
that left me behind,
i think my mind
is a few years behind my body,
maybe when you left
you borrowed a few of my years for the road,
and now i'm a child in body that's been rotting for 18 years,
crying over a friend that has
better things to do.
laughing over injuries to seem strong.
your gift is still on my desk, and it's been
55 days;
almost two months.
i guess i'll leave this one in my closet too.

happy birthday.
thinking of you.

why hadn't i thought of this before?
why are children hidden in the floor?
why is our mother missing and
why is carbon four hundred parts per

human? historical doubts, unusual droughts, i thought
i'd never say it but **** canada. **** budweiser, ****
saint valentine and his pagan oppression, bless my blood
for being dark. there is consciousness in the pores of corals,
a strong mind in the **** at the polar regions of this table.

i am not an arctic hare, i am not a vector
for your raging codependence, four meters
into the thermosphere i am not vulnerable to
methane, early snowmelt, or severe wildfires

but you are.

the love of a best friend
is one that cannot be
smothered
but when i watch you and her
i don't see best friends
i see one girl desperate to escape
a sick, twisted, dying relationship
and i see you
starving, crying out in the darkness
wanting to be the girl she longs for
while she's too busy chasing boys
to notice your sacrifices
you look in the mirror and you see wrong
you see lost
you see empty
where she sees nothing
when she asks why there's no one
to hold her close in the night
you look at me and i can see it in your eyes
i'm here, love. i'm here.
but just because i see it
and just because she sees it
doesn't mean she wants it
doesn't mean she needs it
so please, for me, for her, for them
wake up in the morning
eat the food in front of you
smile at your reflection
just because she doesn't appreciate you
doesn't mean no one else does

when i look at you and her
i don't see best friends
i see a love that's been
smothered
by codependence and
a lack of oxygen

i see loved
and i see
lost.

The bed is cold, my love
Space drifting farther along with time
Your breath only bites my skin
Of where your lips have been.

But your touch burns red in streaks
Kiss pollutes me with this disease
Of codependence on absence.

Your voice is different now, a change in pace
As I run out in hopes to save the last remnant of me.
The masks are on, words are drawn
Into our backs.

Too close to what I love the most
He told me to stand on my own two feet
When he broke every bone.
Cornered and scared, I could only dare
To find my way out.
To find myself again.

It’s so cold out there,
You closed the doors.
Taste of what I’ll never have
To leave me wanting more.
All I needed was warmth:
A smile, a touch.
But you said
I loved you too much.

Today, I got sick of asking all these questions and
so I sat down on a grey cushioned hotel chair
among a group of bodies filled, like mugs to the top,
with honesty and sadness and loudness. Still, I was sick
of wondering the answers because all
that I seem to want anymore is oblivion. I think
therefore I am forced to suffer with the idea
of a self, floating continuously like the
fog on a stage as it drifts between the heads of
the audience members and into the ventilation.
Today, I shiver in the Autumn air, acting out
a withdrawal from
satisfying similes for codependence,
when I know that
salmon swimming up stream are bigger men
than I am.
And when the blades of grass quiver and freeze
in the cold blue morning dew,
I will think about poetry and sigh.
Even though my soul's silver blood runs and dances
into the arms of camaraderie, I fear, the way a
squirrel fears winter, as I shake the hands
connected to new faces that I am not opening doors
but climbing a ladder to a diving-board.
Today, I look out at the dark sky through
the antique glass and I dream of dancing;
I watch as a car passes, swishing on the wet streets,
and I return to my question-asking.

Chemical dependency, with a side of intimate conductivity, followed by romantic conspiracy, turned to emotional connectivity.
without for-sought thought, proceed to three years of Hot Love turned to three months of Cold War.

Violent codependence, bandaged by hopeful commitments, failed by unchecked addictions, and annunciated by priceless resentments, punctuated by lost trust and an honest compassion.

Fight tooth and nail for higher ground, feeling faithless and unforeseen worthlessness.

Realized lack of influence, led by justified relapse, a broken heart or two and a few weeks later, loneliness earned and hopelessness learned.

Try to scramble back to the to the idea of the connection once perfect, now weathered and tired, filled with tired resentment, and unresolved disagreement.

Love & Lust, into Trustless Treason.

I will stand tall against the machine of time's toll on love, tears in my eyes and fear in my heart. Why should I back down.

And why should I not.

I would rather be trampled with suffering than choose one and regret either.

One lover's stand off.

One lover's lament.

Stuck in the middle of this heavily trafficked highway, feet shoulder width apart, stuck in concrete, committed to resistance.


-RÆ

I'm glad she doesn't see. She doesn't see the messages, shared emotion between two people where she could have been one of them. She's safe there, outside the headspace of these people. She doesn't feel the absence of an afterthought; there should have been. But she probably wouldn't take exception.

She's been here and there, providing in space oscillating between awareness and obscurity, never coaxing such an intention to express gratitude. She has been given little of what is hers, and so remains steadfastly defunct of knowing any misdirection. Painfully, or perhaps peacefully, symbolic love isn't hers.

And so it slips and slides between others less modest, ultimately touching via codependence and gravitation, an exertion of a weak nuclear force in relative vacancy.

Hopefully, though she can't see, she isn't wanting. Hopefully, she doesn't know that while she has given her love and life, others derive the result.

I swear I'm not in love with him.
The boy with the super glued heart and lingering smile.
With the feathered name and soft kisses.
I swear I swear I swear I'm not.
But I live, for what he gives...
I live for the moments that bring me back,
the moments that take
the broken springs
from under my back.
And these moments are produced by his presence.
I live for personalities like his,
lacking adjective for the sole fact that he is
the only one that emanates such a state and way of life.
He is the only one to own this armor that is indistinguishable from his skin.
I live for independence and codependence.
Both of which he blesses me with.
He doesn't see the need for harshness and punishment due to flaws. My flaws.
I live for nature.
The same nature as his flesh that melts into the background of the trees, as the shift between his daytime talk and his nighttime swim through my veins.
I live for the yearning of something in the distance.
And he-- he is the most beautiful horizon I've ever reached out to touch. I live for things like him.
And there is nothing like him.
So here's the question. Do I live for nothing...or do I live for him?
I live for him.
But I swear I'm not in love with this boy... (okay, so maybe I am).

Name it princess he said
Anything your heart desires
I will gift it to you
Because your desires
Are my desires
I am yours to command
If you want strawberries in winter
Plump with spring rain
Blushing with summer sun
Spilling out sweet juice
They are yours
If you want crisp cool ice
Jagged edges melting smooth
Droplets spiking warm skin
In the summer heat
It is yours all yours
I will pluck the moon
From the dark midnight
So you may bathe
In its reverent glow
And scatter a carpet
Of stars at your feet
So that their light
May worship you as I do
In all your resplendent glory
Goddess of the night
I will kneel before you
My only aim to please you
He whispers it to her
In honeyed tones golden and sweet
Pouring out seductive persuasion
I will gift it to you
Anything your heart desires
Name it princess he said

I desire to be loved she said
Loved beyond measure and imagining
Never to be abandoned or betrayed
Make me your goddess
Put me on the highest of pedestals
So high only you can reach
For I am yours alone
Fetch me the world
And spread it before me
Let the feast of adoration begin
Squander every moment
To ensure my happiness
To ensure my security
Fix me she begged
And I will fix you in return
Every broken piece of us
Will be gathered together
And mended with pure gold
So much more now
Than it ever was
I will bend myself into any shape
If that is your wish
Your happiness is my happiness
Colour my reality with a rainbow
So it is no longer beige
Dull and unfulfilling
Thrill me and enthrall me
Ride the rollercoaster of excitement
Imprison me in exhilaration
So that I never feel lonely again
Reassure me constantly that I am
Never to be abandoned or betrayed
Loved beyond measure and imagining
I desire to be loved she said

The world of codependence
A fantasy land of unboundaried desire
She the prey he the hunter
She vulnerable a victim of self deceit
He attuned to the vulnerability
Faking a future that will never be
And so infinitely plausible to her
Until the day she realises
She has been betrayed
It was nothing but a cruel sham
A cunning construct
To imprison her in her desires
His poison seeps into her bones
Stealing away her peace
Her head a battleground for her instincts
Where her fear and rage run wild
Anger blazes deep within her
White hot showering sparks
Reaching into corners
That are better left in darkness
Thinking thoughts she never knew
She could begin to shape
Driving her to places from
Which escape did not seem possible
Destroying her fragile sanity
Destroying who she thought she was
Until the day she cried enough
I am not a victim I am not your prey
This toxic desire is not for me
I need healthy boundaries
I reject the world of codependence
I do not fear being alone
I will find my happiness within
I am always enough

Falling backwards
Through the back woods
An atlas
Doesn't matter
When you're lost and shattered

Fight my demons for another day
I didn't want to be happy anyway
Alcoholism and thirst to slay
Is there anything I can do to make you stay?

I'm my own ******* nemesis
Trying to find relevance
Nothing makes any sense
Life of codependence

Nothing but nightmares in a dream
Nothing what it seem
Staring at a screen
What is a human bein'?

I wish that your smell didn't still
Linger around me like a phantom
I wish that your kiss wasn't still imprinted on my cheek
Or tickling my neck like a softly woven scarf
I wish I didn't still feel your awkwardness
Clinging to me when I see friends,
That I didn't run home to the absence of your embrace every time I get scared, which is a lot since you left
Your socks sneak into my drawers
And snuggle into mine,
Folding into little laundered intimacies
It's been over year
Can you believe that?
I want to run into your arms and tell you that but I haven't touched you in longer than I care to remember.
God I miss you
I miss having a home
In your smile,
Taking comfort in the warmth of your body under my sheets.
I taste you every morning in my coffee
In my warm pumpkin salad lunches,
At dinner with wine
At all hours on my lips.
You don't know it, but you are with me as I steal expensive groceries,
You feel the thrill as I escape the checkout again.
You stole my heart, it's a clumsy metaphor but you did it,
On that first date you nicked a cheap telescope and through its blur we watched the world lose its focus,
Everything but us
Lost focus
And I still can't see it,
I can't see the world around me
Anymore
And now the memories of you are blurred too,
Either by time or by the tears
I can't tell.

When I was upset you would refuse to leave me alone,
As if you were afraid I'd drown in my own tears if you weren't there to hold me up
Now I am alone and I don't even know
Whether or not I did drown
Or if I will soon
You aren't holding me up anymore,
Instead you are pulling at me desperately, painfully,
Possessively
Heartbreak is jealous of every moment not consumed with it
I am still caught in the web of our codependence, spun and dried out,
No longer burning with poison
But consumed instead with empty death
Have you ever seen the shell of an insect left behind by a spider?
I have
You already know that I felt a strange solidarity with it.
Please call me back,
Even if its just to say goodbye.
I need new words to echo round my empty shell,
Words that aren't "I'd be nothing without you"
"I need you"
"I will always love you"

Please, just give me the sound of your voice saying "its over"
Or "you are beautiful,
The world is gloriously open and new when you are alone"

And you would open your arms and uncurl your fingers,
Not to embrace me,
But to finally let me go.
I am ready-please set me free.

the key to life
is living long enough
that you no longer live with reality
but reality lives with you
in a perfectly melded
twisted version of codependence
in which the answers to your questions
don’t even matter that much anymore
because the questions are just
so much fun
to discuss

She saves me/
Oh how she saves me/
She makes me/
She brings my eyes to rest/
Her memory fills my emptiness up, just enough, to turn away all the demons/

She breaks me down/
Oh how I do too/
We both have our problems/
And those problems hate the thought of “us”/
Everytime, no matter what said, we never split, we know our codependence/

I am not a love poet/
I think myself too down for pure love/
You know, Love, that we are pushed and pulled by those around/
That they doom us for our very love/

And we are saved by eachother/
We will be the death of eachother/
They will rip us into pieces the second they find proof/
But can we let that hate, be a constant reminder of how strong you hold on to me /
And how strong I’ll hold on to you?/

She really does make me/
She will never not be warming my mind/
She is going to be the death of me/
And I love her for that

You love abusing me
You love telling me what to do
Your servant
You love when I do the dishes
"Because I know how to do them right"
Because you hit me when I did them "wrong"
and you hit me when the other kids wouldn't wash them at all

You love it when someone takes care of you
You conditioned me to be the perfect caregiver
For you
You love codependence
You love yourself

You don't realize that you don't love me
You grieve for me
You grieve, because it's not easy
To live without
A fulltime caregiver
A fulltime maid
A fulltime cook

It took me a long time to learn what love is
I love my Husband
I love his smile, his brilliant eyes, and that he hugs me
when I'm feeling down
I love listening to him get excited
about weird and pointless things
I love seeing him happy, with or without me
I love that we are on the same team
Team "Us", both of us

You can tell me "I Love You" everyday
for the rest of  your life
but you are only lying to yourself

Sold my soul for a warm body to lay next to
some call that codependence
I call it no direction
after a season of depression
falling head straight in to the dirt
and into the arms of whoever grabs you first
cuffing season is definitely a thrill
where we're all out for the ****
we want it all to stay the same
we can't accept everything's changed
on the other side of the darkness
why did I think anyone would be there waiting
I'm not the only one who's changing