Long

I want the type of love that people envy. Not because I want the attention, but because I want to know that I have something that people rarely find.

I want passion. I want a man who will push me against the wall and ravage me. I want more in his mind than lust. I want to mean something to someone. I want to mean everything to someone. I want to be his every waking thought. I want to exist where I do not.

I want frantic kisses in bed and someone else’s sweat on my chest. I want a man who will accept my sexuality with all of its kinky attributes. I want a man who will suit my animalistic needs but who still knows how to make love.

I want romance. I want tender kisses and warm hugs. I want a body pressed against mine. I want a man’s arms around me in a loving physical silence. I want to belong to someone, and I want him to belong to me. I want those butterflies when he whispers in my ear. I want him to say sweet things and mean them.

I want a man who will appreciate me as a woman instead of a plaything, who will use me as his rock and not his whore. I want cold nights and hot kisses. I want lingering tongues and trembling pulses.

I want a man who will challenge me intellectually but never find joy in my ignorance. I want honesty so impenetrable that it hurts. I want a man who has no qualms about sinking his teeth into me. I want a man who knows what safety words are for. I want a man who always wants me but has the self control to wait. I want a place to cry but never a reason. I want love so radiant that it shines in my eyes and reflects in his.

I want spontaneity. I want kisses in the rain and company in a storm. I want love on a soft floor. I want someone to make happy. I want to run my fingers through his hair and rake my nails across his back. I want to please him in every way I know how. I want to take his bottom lip in my teeth and milk a vibrating moan from his mouth.

I want laughter so pure that we sound ridiculous together. I want corn and fluff. I want unabashed comical relief. I want his smile imprinted in my memory but never the need to recall it. I want a man who hugs me from behind and nibbles on my ear. I want a man who relishes in the simple sensation of fingers tracing invisible pictures on his back. I want a man who calls me just to hear my voice.

I want a lover. I want a friend. I want days to crawl across the sleepiness within a white hammock. I want fights to end completely without harbored anger or remorse. I want arguments to end in sex. I want a man who understands what makes a relationship last and puts it into practice. I want a man who loves massages—giving and receiving.

I want a man who’s vocal. I want to hear his pleasure in rippling groans that flex and tense his torso. I want silence to disappear in the shadow of ecstasy but blanket the times when nothing must be said. I want a man who knows the value of the word “beautiful.” I want to believe him when he says it.

I want instant heat between my legs at the sight of him. I want his hands. I want dripping sarcasm in wine glasses. I want his voice to be my aphrodisiac. I want his lips to hesitate above mine for a split second to intensify what is to come.

I want a man who appreciates the dying art of the written romantic letter. I want tea for two and cuddling on the couch. I want Jimmy Stewart nights and Kevin Smith nights. I want slow dancing for no reason. I want him to tell me what to wear so he can look at me hungrily all night long. I want Chinese takeout, chopsticks, and pajamas. I want really bad kisses… with good ones to make up for them.

I want lips, tears, teeth, nails, leather, lace, flesh, and metal. I want parallel heads with an annex for dreams. I want messy perfection.

And I want.
And I want.
And I want.

Nature

There is levity in sorrow
and laughter in pain,
a smile to be had in the wake of heartache.

Through the deceptive fog of tears
there is life on the other side,
a corporeal terminus to the mist.

There is comfort in the terror
and perseverance despite fear,
a drive within the bones to find the joke in the anguish.

It is too easy to dwell where shadows hide us,
too risky to speak the truth.
But moving on never means forgetting.

It's a compulsion that sweeps us into our compulsory misfortunes,
requisite vexations,
and the crippling disappointments.

But there is always hope in our failings,
a thrill to the struggle,
and the potential for desire freshly sparked.

Evolved

Sometimes this coursing blood
runs redder than a sea
of battles fought and sadly lost
amidst endless debauchery.

Sometimes these veins constrict
to thin this wild life
of incessant pain and desolation,
of misery and strife.

Sometimes these bones they weaken
beneath so rough a skin
that pales with every sunrise,
that hardens from within.

Sometimes this heart it shatters,
breaks, crumbles in this chest;

adverse to palpitations,
begs, pleads, for simple rest.

Sometimes these barren eyes
mirror sand and ardent flame;
they glass with deprivation,
and will never be the same.

Fluid

I am your toy to mangle,
your slave to suppress with chains,
the mud ensnared upon your sole,
your peeling flakes of skin.

I am your pawn to sacrifice,
your dog to starve at will,
the rain cast from your fingertips,
your exuded drops of sweat.

I am your experiment to ruin,
your voodoo doll to stab,
the saliva which you expectorate,
your faithful lover in your bed.

Flaw

Yesterday I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, You're beautiful. You're gorgeous! You're friendly and funny and fiercely passionate about what matters to you and the people you love. You're clever and adventurous. There's something that burns inside you like copper sulfate, haunting, ethereal. It scares people. It excites them. It makes them want to experiment with you. It draws them in and your personality makes them stay. Things are fine. You are okay.

Today that certainty fell to ash. My fire intimidates others. Once they get too close they see, by the light of my own passion, that I am ugly. I'm an oasis in the desert, a siren with a fish head. I'm too much and not enough. Not worth the trouble, not good enough. Never a perfect fit. I may still be funny, but the less someone likes you, the less they're inclined to laugh.

Soon you'll scare everyone away, I tell myself. And no one will laugh. You will cease to be funny. All you'll be left with is your wit, which will turn to cynicism, which will wrinkle and tear at your face and heart.

Confidence flits and flutters. It fades and frays. A useless friend. A liar. A thief.

But without it, I am miserable. Without it, I am nothing to anyone, no one. I have no future, no hope, no cause, no goal. Without it, I am alone. Doubly alone because I do not even have the support of my self.

Fickle friend. 

Faustian foe.

Tomorrow it might be back. When I've picked myself up and convinced me that I no longer need it, there it will be.

Laughing.

Inescapable.

Necessary.

Evil.

Motions

Get over me
I'll get over you
Bump and grind 'til we're through

With each other
With pleasure
Coming for something better

Out of my face
Get behind
Someone else is on my mind

You push inside
I ride you out
This is what love is all about

Certainty

I could have gotten married.
I could have had kids.
I could have woken up to his face forever.
I could have been loved for as long as I live.
I could have had intimacy and commitment.

If I'd stuck it out,
if I'd pretended,
I wouldn't have fooled him
or myself.
But we would have gone on.

To marry.
To have kids.
To wake up beside each other forever.
To have intimacy and commitment.
And something like love.

But I gave it all up.

I broke it.

For me.
For him.
For no guarantee that I'd ever find someone
who could ever love me
like he did.

I threw it all away.

For happiness.

Worth

What is a dangerous level of trust? How does one become so connected to another human being that they speak their heart and their mind without regard for clarity or even consequence?

It isn't love. At least not between the two people in question. It is possible that one is in love, or thinks one is, and the other is merely a creature of the moment, endowed with good intentions and marred by curiosity.

We crave existence, to be heard, to be known. But in our existential struggle, there is little time to consider the hearts we break. They pile up, time the only salve. We march forward, the means to heal beyond our grasp and understanding. We become numb to our futility. If time is the only answer, we are nonobligated to help, to stop, to fix. If we even do care enough about someone to pause and ask their forgiveness, what does one make of that?

I will say it again, it isn't love. Not for the person who beseeches forgiveness. It is more likely self-preservation, survival. With all the bodies we leave behind us, we must never feel guilty or we are ruined. If those we hurt say all is forgiven, our consciences are clear. We do not have to self-reflect or hate ourselves longer than necessary. We are free to tumble through life as we always have, selfishly, single-minded, but having no direction.

What happens to those then who forgive? If they forgive falsely, that is, their pardon was insincere, they are eaten alive inside by grief, an overwhelming disgust for themselves, and in the worst of cases, by love.

The person who honestly forgives, who cannot imagine not forgiving, what does that say about her? Is she weak? Does she not mind being used then stepped on? Is she more or lesser for forgiving? Is she a lover or a fool? Perhaps both. What doors does her choice open? Is she no longer strong? Has she invited those who would harm her into her home, her heart? Is she to forever be used?

How long until laughter, honest happiness though it may be at the time, gives way to tears? The pain is there. She can feel it. It never leaves. A knot in her center that tightens when she remembers, thinks about whether forgiveness shows weakness or strength.

What is she worth now?

She daydreams more than ever, slipping into her thoughts unawares, waking from surreality seconds or minutes later under the impression that she has wasted the entire day.

Always the bridesmaid but never the bride.

The best friend but never the lover.

What's wrong with her? What is she missing? If she is trustworthy, intelligent, humorous, independent, caring, selfless, and, dare I say it, maybe even the slightest bit beautiful, what is stopping any sensible man from loving her?

It must be something wrong with her. The alternative is that there is something wrong with every man she's ever met. And how, scientifically, could she accept that as true?

So she forgives them. All of them. It comes from an honest place and makes her heart hurt less. But she always dreads the next one to come along and use her for fun, for distraction, as an anesthetic for their own misery. She is tired of opening up only to slowly sew herself back together. She worries it will always be the same.

After everything, there is still a very small hope within her that she is wrong.

One cannot help but think how much hope had been there to begin with, how much has been extinguished until this point, and how much more she can take before what is left goes out.