Respect, Apologize, Thank, Forgive

{Photo Credit: The Ballerina Project}

Dear Body,
Sorry for the rigorous maltreatment.
Dear Brain,
Sorry for the tactless pity. 
Dear Heart,
Sorry for the extensive distrust. 

Dear Soul,
Thank you for the resilience. 

My Lips are Chapped, and My Heart is Full.

Truth be Told:

The way you look at me is how I always imagined you would.

My friends, assuredly unaware of the irony, all jokingly remark,

"It's a sign of the apocalypse."

But I've been thinking and maybe they're right, 

this just might be the beginning of the end;

for my entire existence has been spent preparing to reflect light into those eyes 

your eyes, yearning for the resultant ocular exclamation,

and now I'm not quite sure what to do with myself. 

The only thing I know for certain- 

in this moment I get to seek answers to these existential questions

while basking in the radiant validation of my hopes 

emanating from the warmth of your stare.

Reflections on Thresholds

Eighteen

I'm too young for this.

It isn't right

for if I continue myself I shall loose in the fight

Somehow you got a hold of a simple skiff of skin

then proceeded to burrow your way in.

So deeply entangled in treachery

dysfunction, disgrace and calamity

feel more like sanity

I cannot believe I let this happen.

Disgraced the very name that I use to lace up my heart.

Blood drips down my bodice

spreading its sickly warm grin across my face.

Drenched in hot desire

STOP

I should've never lit a fire too large for my small hands to extinguish,

I'd need your help.

That's what scares me-making me cower in my thoughts. 

{Photo Credit: The Ballerina Project}

Twenty-One

Woman, I promise that if you stick this out you are going to find a way to take all those broken, charred pieces of who you were- who you think you ought to be that have been left in your hands by ex lovers, and use the charcoal to draw a beautiful picture, or a map, or a graph, or a story on the ceiling of your heart. You're going to find in all that misery, and sorrow valuable tools to create a love far more fulfilling than you've ever known possible, an unconditional, insatiable love of self.

One day you're going to lie down naked on the floor of your soul, look up and marvel at the beauty that became of what you once ascertained to be nothing but destroyed parts of you.

Then something amazing is going to happen. Someone on their journey through life will stumble aimlessly, and likely unintentionally into where you're lying vulnerable, exposed, but the first thing he notices won't be your nudity- Oh No! he'll be chin up head back completely immersed, and astounded by the immense beauty above him, walking forwards unaware of his increasingly close proximity to you. You'll probably hear him come in, it won't disturb you, you're eyes will remain peeled on what's overhead. And when he takes his 229th step into the room his foot brushing skin instead of tile, he'll look down upon your confidently vulnerable form laying there emitting waves of joyous relaxation. He'll quickly look back up, then immediately back down, and in that second he'll fall in love with every piece of you that was, every piece of you that is. You'll calmly, but sweetly invite him to join you, and by the time he lies belly up, his body adjacent to yours, and looks back he will have already fallen in love with every piece of you that will ever be. 

Simple, because he felt the awe-inspiring power of your self-love before he even knew your name.