I have a new lover. She caresses the small of my back as I write this devotion. Whispers sweet nothings in my ear between nibbles. Reminding me of all I ever was and who I’ll never be. Her name is Fear, and what a mistress she has been to me.
Lovely nights spent creeping through the shelves of my life. Questions peeking from each crevice begging for my hands to unfold them and their depths. Alluring, yet dismissive. Each one a shell of something I once knew. How I perused, allowing each to wash over me and introduce me to a new desire. That’s how I met her.
At first timid, deceptively so. Never outright demanding my attention but always finding herself in my line of sight. I’d watch her dance beneath the light of my mind, swaying her persuasion, seemingly the source of my elation. Intoxicating. How we’d dance our tango and attempt to part ways on puffed lips. She always knew how to get me to stay, the piques of interest within the questions that built our palace falling to the floor with our gowns. Walls crumbling as I did in her hands.
For a time I do admit, she ran me ragged. Ideas of elevation a stab to the empress, seemingly an attempt to escape from her clutches. I could do no different than how she saw me. The whispers no longer dripped with devotion, but instead with doubt. How could someone who saw me as so strong now consider me incapable of performance? I became lost in her displays of unrequited love. Each grasp of the face only reminded me of the heart strings she’d trace. I was no longer me, but hers. A bidding I was doomed to fulfill under the guise of safety. I was trapped. Who had loved me more, me or her? Was there a difference?
Until one day I began to understand.
Reciprocity is always a funny thing. Her studying became her ridiculing. Quips of passion now a lashing against her stoic facade. For I saw through her. Her love, though detrimental, opened parts of me the questions could not. She wanted me stuck. Still enough to see me as she did. I had misunderstood her. For the depths I had ignored were the home of my salvation. The troubles I had endured were of my own doing. My negligence indicative of her power, the one she had been bestowed by me.
As I write this I realize now she never meant to debilitate me.
She showed me the parts of myself I had forgotten to be proud of.
There was an unexplored depth within me that made me unequipped to explore hers. Each beckon a beacon shining light onto my waves of desperation. I had desired to stifle her. Chastise her for being who she always was. Strengths begging to be used, aches of acknowledgment hushed through the once filled halls of my mind. Where had I gone? To look in the mirror felt cursed, and to look into her eyes felt worse.
“Acknowledge me”, she’d whisper seductively. Draping herself across my canvas as she always did. Time and time again, seducing me to completion. Her quarrel with unfinished work comparable only to her disdain for dismissed desire. I couldn’t possibly know at the time but she did want what was best for me. By seeing her beneath the surface I began to note her intention. Each doubt an opportunity to dissolve my ego. For she was the mother of my questions, and the father of my solutions.
Her devotion to being who she is was my fuel to find who I once was. I merely began to see her in the light she had laid in. Unmoving and ever flowing. Gratitude falls from my lips even as she lays her head in my lap now. Each key a song dedicated to her patience. I thank you my love, for it is with you I know who I am without me.
