What a terrible shame that I have such specific taste in people.
There are so many great ones.
So many attentive ones.
So many who would admire me, touch me, listen to me.
And yet at the end of the night I am lonely, not because they leave me behind,
But because I leave them behind, to wait for the few people I know I can learn from in the ways I need to.
The problem is, I seem to spend most of my time just...
Waiting.
I could be that person laughing in the bar,
I could be one of a crowd, talking,
Unhindered,
Unburdened, for the moment, by solitude.
But I am so horribly magnetized. I am so horribly aware.
And I go where I am pulled by whatever sleeps inside my bones, that stirs for certain voices but not for others.
I follow their echoes down alleyways, and at the end of the night,
I have walked alone for miles, and told not a soul my thoughts.
Because in truth, my taste for people is not only specific.
It is venomous.
It is bitter.
It is what tears taste like, or rain, when you've been bowed beneath either in silence and the drops roll down to kiss your lips.
And perhaps the sadness, I could handle. Perhaps I could accept these moments of clarity as transient, as all encompassing in their brevity.
But,
See,
The worst thing isn't to follow and be left behind.

The worst thing is choosing not to follow.

To turn and quietly take my leave, and stay silent, and ask no questions,
Even when they crawl up my throat like smoke, raw and urgent.
The worst is to feel a sudden spark of connection in a liquid world, that slides over my skin like water,
And then to watch it fizzle out-
Puzzled, always puzzled, and always, like a child,
Surprised.

What about me do I want you to know?
I could say
I'm a lonely person
Who looks upon the world with a hunger
She doesn't understand.
Sometimes
I pass through the streets like a shadow
Gazing at the warm, rosy souls around me
And when people touch each other
Even in conversation, without noticing,
I ache with separateness
But not
With envy.

I could say
I'm a bit different
A bit dark,
I could say I've seen enough pain
To make me cruel
And that the only thing I'm truly proud of
Is that I am kind anyway.

I could tell you
That I've fallen in love with half a dozen strangers
Just for their eyes
And stayed there for years.
That although I rarely reach for anything,
I yearn in silence
Quietly smoldering, burning for a world full of rawness and contact,
But kept from it by a strangely thick skin
And brittle chinadoll bones.

I could tell you that when I choose to look into your eyes
And let you see the chaos in me
It is a gift which very few receive from me
And even fewer
Appreciate.

I could tell you that if you are gentle with me
I will mend every part of you that ever felt shattered
And meekly walk away when I am finished

I confess
I find it so much easier to be tender
To people who will forget me in the morning.
So much safer to run my fingers along the cheek of someone
Lost
To their need- whatever it may be-
Who won't
Or can't
Notice the hearth of my heart catching my ribs and sending cinders through my veins.
It is not love that makes me tender,
Although love blooms easily from my tenderness.
It is a fascination with other people's vulnerability
Their fragility
Their raw, honest desires and fears.
It draws me in and I spend all my days
Just tirelessly holding back arms that ache to comfort
And eyes that burn to see every dark corner of these intricate creatures I live near day after day
To see and understand and become,

Because I suppose the thing I'd most like to tell you
About me
Is that good and evil
Right and wrong
Mean very little to me, in the end:

I want to be.
I want to be
All.

I want to be every human thing there is
Touch it
Feel it
Taste it
Worship it.
I want to feel every wretched and exquisite thing I am capable of holding without shattering,
And I want to press them all with my palms
Into someone else's skin and watch them rise like ink.
It doesn't matter to me what you are, what you do,
Because whether it harms or mends I will look at you like a stained glass window
Like a statue of marble
Like a painting, all lit and framed and bursting with color.
I want
Every detail of this world
To touch every part of me
And that
Is what I should tell you now
Because that
Is what you will fear later.

Quite honestly, I never thought I'd make it this far.
And I finally know, it's not down to luck:
When you are thrown into the fire, either you are incinerated
Or you are forged.
When people ask me how I've gone on
I try to tell them something soft
Something gentle
But the truth is,
I wasn't nurtured
I wasn't coaxed from the ground like a sapling,
No
For good or ill,
Like a fine silver ring
Like an iron gate
Like a
Blade,
I have been forged
And I am dangerous.

It's always been like that with you. I think I always knew you'd hate me in the end, but... I touch the things that you have touched. Silly, meaningless things. Those glasses, delicate and mirror-shine gold. A door where you used to linger or a seat you always preferred. I touch them as if they are sacred. Somehow I always knew that was as close to you as I could be, and now I touch the handle you touched every day for so long, and I remember you with such a present stab of longing and hurt and frustration that I pull back as if burned. But a second later, my fingers are back, tracing every dent and ding, every flaw that distinguishes the cold metal, hungry for the memory of who you were when you were kind to me. For a moment, I am frozen, remembering you smile at me, as if we shared a secret, remembering how I could never quite meet your eyes- that startling green, had I betrayed you already by caring so?- I remember and it is glorious and devastating. I never touched you, nor you me, but we left a mark upon each other and it stings with a deliciously permanent pain. I feel love for that wound, just now, as my fingers quest for any evidence of yours, although a thousand hands have separated ours in brushing that handle. And then suddenly I pull back, the illusion shattered, and walk quickly from the hall, chagrin flooding me for loving so deeply someone who can't even stand the sound of my name.

It terrifies me
How easy it is to live without you.
That's the real reason
I try so hard to keep you close.
It doesn't make sense to me that this love
Could cool so.
That's why I cling.
That's why I panic.
That's why
I try
So hard.
I can't let you forget me
But worse
The worst
I can't let me
Forget you.
You left.
You left and it mattered.
You left and I grew without you
I learned without you
I became
Without you.
You left.
And although I fear that
Fear you
What I am... so much more afraid of
Is this:
Last year
You taught me
That you are
Unnecessary.
And I didn't want to know.

Nowadays I know
That I still exist
Even when you don't say goodnight.

I am shocked that I am here.
Look at this flesh, so thin
So pale
So brittle
Like an eggshell- cracked.
It seems so easy to crush
And yet
You'd never guess the blows it has taken
Without crumbling.
I wonder if I'd be respected if my injuries showed on the outside.
I wonder if I'd be feared.
There is a point when pity turns to fear, you know- when the thought is spawned that something SHOULD be dead, and isn't.
A mistrust forms,
An uneasiness.
I feel it sometimes when I look too long into my own eyes in the mirror
And see flashes in their depths: all the silvery memories of pain
Like little fish, like little blades.
I feel disquieted at the notion
That I can hold a sea of suffering
And sigh out only sweetness.
It's not that suffering has sewn no cruelty inside me-
Quite the opposite, it has been a spark caught on the breeze, and something hot and dark
Rages in here nearly all the time.
But only in here.
I have seen too many hurt souls
Hurt others
And I refuse to do the same.
And although it is extraordinary that I am not ground to dust by the blows landed from outside
What I am truly surprised about is that I have not been shattered
From in here.
I am crueler than most people you've met
But only to myself.
Only inside.
I am like a paper lantern-
All flames inside and soft glow out.
And I refuse to hurt you. I refuse to. That is my revenge upon everyone
Who has ever been cruel to me:
It ends here.
Now.
With me.
I will not let it out, not even if it damns me.
I am shocked that I am here.