I was drowning when we met.
You might not have known it, behind my lowered eyes and quiet tongue, but I found myself swept in a current much stronger than me, and heading towards rocks
You were there
Just in time with a life-vest,
tossing me a line of iron when I felt I was too far out to sea to be saved.
You caught me up
With strong voices and gentle arms
And ready to breathe new oxygen into me
Pumping a heart back to life
when it had long since forgotten how to really beat
And helping me purge the salt of shame and fear I’d been swallowing
You rescued me
And laid me on the lonely stretch of sand on which I build my cage
I never was a strong swimmer,
Fighter,
Lover,
Writer.
I met you.
I was killing myself living in the past
and you offered me a future when I did not believe
I was worthy of such a thing.
I met you.
I left that shore to follow you into woods,
and never looked back.
I learned from you.
All of it, breathless in my seat
I was afraid to blink and breathe for fear
that I might miss a beat of the lessons you were teaching
Even though you might not have known you were teaching them at all.
watching your moves,
listening to your stories and letting them fill my brain and my body and my heart,
Feeling the aches when the emotional vulnerability laid bare was so much more than I had ever seen displayed.
I remember how much I marveled at your strength.
You taught me the miracle in words
How to attack with them the way you would with teeth–teeth clasped in a lovers shoulder. Teeth at the jugular of the one who broke your heart.
How to cry with them–finding a way to bare your heart
and trusting others to know the ache living inside.
How to make love with them.
How to reach out and touch a heart, a soul, a hand.
I’d never been comfortable with my words,
They were things I bit back, swallowed and choked on
Things I scratched down on paper with shaking hands
When you clasped them in yours and said
Stop.
Breathe.
Step back.
And always,
keep going.
You taught me about power.
A thing I thought so far beyond my reach
That it would be silly for me to lift my hand towards it
Convinced I would
crumble like old paper
But through you, I found strength.
I learned how to rule my pleasure
And how to embrace my pain
To look upon those who would shame me
With cold contempt
And bring them to their knees
How to straighten my spine and wrap it in steel
How to take back what was rightfully mine.
You told me no one could drive me from my home,
And showed me that no one can hold dominion over this soul.
You taught me what it was to love.
Real love–not built on bloodshed, not tinged with jealousy and sick with spite
not love built on tears shed at 3 a.m.,
not with a constant stab of pain to tarnish the feeling and turn it into the monster that lives under the bed.
Not a kiss that tastes of regret
I found love among you,
unexpected and swift, feeling it grow within me,
consuming and changing.
And gave me the courage to dive into those waters head first
I learned that love isn’t a race to a finish line, a competition meant to always have one victor and one unfortunate heart bleeding out on the ground.
But the appreciation of someone’s skin against yours in the dark as you drift to sleep,
the steady rise and fall of a chest
and the pounding of a heart after sex.
Being held through tragedy and fear,
Reassurance even when neither of you ask for it
Dinner at inconvenient nighttime hours
And laughter
So much laughter.
I know now, that love is understanding the phrase “It was worth it”, no matter how it ends.
I leave this city, with a heart full of gratitude
For you
For your acceptance from the beginning, when I wore my uncertainty with flower print dresses and cardigans and opaque tights, because I was too afraid to wear anything else.
For the stories you have shared with me,
the ones that have broken you to pieces
and the ones that have put you back together again
The times I have cried for you
Laughed with you
Been moved by you
Been inspired by you
For the times I have felt you in my heart long after the night has ended.
For saving me from the dark place I had made my home
You gave me a pack with which to roam–A place to lay my heavy heart and fragile bones.
I may strike out now on my own,
but I will never stop carrying you with me, honoring all you have taught me,
and loving the memories you have given me.
You are it.
You are my candle wax and knife
Winged boots and ambition
You are my one thousand
tiny,
beautiful deaths.
You are my beast
You are my balm,
You are the limericks and haiku and my favorite maple-candy slowly melting on the tongue
You are my songbird
You are my wandering angel
You are my sister howl echoing in the night
You are my jasmine vine and my shadow of strength
You are my New Orleans.
I came to you with a brain littered with a thousand reasons to go.
Thank you for giving me a reason to remain.
(This piece was written for my final Esoterotica show on July 26th, after 5 years with this group, and it remains one of the most heart-wrenching goodbyes I have ever given. I have shared with them my life in its barest form, and found love within them. I have a soul and a spine, and I owe it to them.)
“Cat’s Eye Nebula”
agathokakological 