Dang[erous Coastlines]

I would have loved you gently.

What a terrible thing.

What a spectacle.

Not with sharpened teeth or clever little cruelties.

Not with applause.

In the quiet ways.

The ways men like you never prepare for.

I would have learned the geography of your silences the way sailors learned dangerous coastlines.

By wreckage.

By moonlight.

By returning anyway.

I would have sat at your feet without humiliation.

Because devotion, in the right hands, becomes a cathedral instead of a cage.

Some kneel like surrender.

Others kneel like vows.

You think submission is obedience because that’s the only version you were offered.

But I wanted to give you something far more frightening.

Rest.

I wanted to make a home inside the part of you that still flinches when touched too kindly.

The animal thing.

The starving thing.

The man who performs power so beautifully no one noticed how lonely he was beneath it.

I would have touched you like you were neither god nor ruin.

Just human.

Just tired.

Just worthy.

I would have undone myself for you slowly.

Like unlacing a dress at the edge of a party neither of us belonged to.

Not for pain.

For intimacy.

For that unbearable softness two damaged people circle like wolves around a campfire.

I wanted to belong to you.

Not ownership.

Recognition.

The way certain songs belong to summer.

The way grief belongs to love.

I think that’s why you run.

Because I did not worship the mask correctly.

I kept kissing the man underneath.

And yeah, I’d still do it now.

I would still open for you like lamplight in bad weather.

Still crawl into your loneliness without demanding it become prettier.

Still offer my softness to the parts of you that treat tenderness like an ambush.

And so I did it, didn’t I?

I loved you until you forgot how to fight.

I loved you until it broke you.

Dang.