"your evil soul" - a poem of earned submission

[ma****]

I know what you are.
That is the worst part.
There is no innocence left
for me to hide behind.
–
I have seen the cruelty
beneath your tenderness,
the selfishness beneath your generosity,
the little blade you keep
inside every kindness.
–
I know you can h_rt me.
I know you might.
–
And–still–
when you turn your attention toward me,
something inside me
goes quiet.
–
I have spent my whole life
scraping the earth for any sliver of pride
for surviving.
–
I knew my worth.
I knew my boundaries.
I knew exactly
what I would never tolerate.
–
Then you came along
and somehow
made certainty feel exhausting.
–
I don't want to be strong with you.
I don't want to explain myself.
I don't want to defend
every soft and frightened piece of me.
–
Take my vanity.
–
God,
take it. Ruin it. Ruin me.
–
I am tired of carrying it.
–
Let me kneel
in whatever strange place
you have made for me.
–
Let me be small.
Let me be insignificant.
Let me hear you say
that I am nothing
and discover,
to my own horror,
that I am still here.
–
Still breathing.
–
Still looking at you
like you have hung the moon
just to watch me debase myself
trying to reach it.
–
There is something obscene
about the relief of it.
–
To have nothing left to prove.
–
To have my worth
stripped down
until there is no performance left,
no cleverness,
no dignity I can use
to bargain my way back
into your favor.
–
And then—
–
to find you still looking at me.
–
Let me fall victim to your evil soul.
Strip my pride bare
and let me supplicate myself
to your selfish whims.
–
Let my tongue struggle
to speak under your weight.
Fill my lungs and stomach
with the elixir of your desire.
–
May I not know breath while I feast.
My thoughts have been so totally consumed
so let me consume.
Let me know
but the hint of a taste of you
and I will live forever.
–
I think I have spent
so much of my life
believing love had to be earned
that I became fascinated
by the possibility
of being loved
after I had nothing left
to offer.
–
After the charm.
–
After the competence.
–
After the beautiful things
I could make.
–
After every reason
someone might have
to keep me around.
–
What if I were worthless
and you still wanted me near?
–
What if I were nothing
and somehow
nothing was enough?
–
I know how dangerous
that thought is.
–
I know you are not salvation.
–
You are not some dark god
who came to teach me
what love means.
–
You are simply a person
with a wicked, selfish
beautiful soul
with sharp edges
and terrible appetites
and a talent for finding
the places where I am weakest.
–
And I am still drawn to you.
–
Hopelessly.
–
Humiliatingly.
–
Like a moth
that has finally realized
the flame is fire
and cannot remember
why that was supposed
to matter.
–
I don't want freedom
the way I thought I did.
–
Maybe sometimes
freedom is the moment
you stop fighting
to remain untouched.
–
I want to give up
the exhausting responsibility
of being someone
who always knows her worth.
–
I want you
to look at me
as though I am nothing
and let me decide
for myself
whether I am still worthy
of being loved.
–
I think that is the terrible,
beautiful secret
beneath all this ruin.
–
You could take
my pride.
–
You could take
my certainty.
–
You could grind
every carefully constructed
version of myself
into dust.
–
And somewhere
under all of it,
–
I would still be me.
–
Still reaching.
–
Still choosing.
–
Still whispering
your name
like I had found
the one place
where I could finally
stop pretending
I was not afraid
of how badly
I wanted to belong.

[Br****]

I got goosebumps while reading this and a tear threatened to escape down my cheeks. Sounds so beautiful and yet so ***ful xx

[di****]

Goose bumps you say

[di****]

Bravo