My Dearest Beauty,
You ask me .. what do I want?
I want you to understand me .. even a little.
I want you to see me .. when I am not there.
I want you to hear me .. when I do not speak.
I want you to feel me .. when I can not reach for you.
I want you to know that when you are not there .. I die a little. The amniotic fluid closes around me and the world seems far away and unimportant..
..your world.
It is not in me to seek out humanity. Even when I need to. Even when it is a fire that consumes me from the inside out .. I can not ask for what I need.
In fact I will seek out exactly the opposite .. for in what I do not need there is safety.
I wish you understood that.. you used to.
When you have been there and I feel a sense of comfort and trust there are times my guard is allowed to falter and I say or do some kindness .. some emotionally charged gift.
There is always a price to pay .. always.
I chastise myself for being so weak and making myself vulnerable. For allowing that boy to try to connect. For feeling .. for a moment ... as if you can be trusted with my dreams .. my aspirations and nightmares.
My Desert.
To pretend .. for a moment ... that you understand.
And you seem to understand in those moments .. as if a window has opened and you can see inside for the first time. You say and do things that lend to that mirage .. that haunt of understanding. But then it is as if you expect me to know better. To be a different person after that.
To suddenly not disappear.
As if the Desert no longer exists simply for the knowledge of it. To always be there when you need me. To tell you when I need you and not hold you accountable for when you do not pay close enough attention to realize when I am lost. To not punish you severely for your abandonment .. whether intentional or simply carelessness. And when I strike .. you cry out in your misery and suffering with accusations laid against me for my cruelty.
I am not a project to remake in your image. I am not a charity case that you can bring some "good news" to and I toddle off in my new found faith and shed my apathetic and sarcastic skin. I am not your convert. The Desert does not magically heal itself just because you are Beauty. You are what you are .. and I am what I am. You color my scope of vision .. you inject me with a drug I am addicted to ... but it has not changed who I am.
It does not change how easily I wander off in the Desert and disappear. It is my default. It is where I am safe and where I know the names of all the daemons and there are no gut wrenching surprises. No beatings .. no hunger ... no wounds from misplaced naive faith in flawed humanity. Where there are no charges laid against me for who I am .. where who I am is appreciated for the very survival techniques that you label as cruel flaws.
You still think it is a choice .. that I consider and choose this path. That at the point of decision I could make a different one. I could with clarity of thought move in another direction. That your intoxicating effect on me must shift the polar gravities of my reality.
But you fail to understand me .. yet again.
It is not a conscious choice ... it is simply my existence. If there is a way to go back to the beginning and remake the very cellular structure .. reform my DNA ... perhaps there is hope that I may be a different person. But .. would that be what you wanted of me? To be someone else? To not be .. me? You can not remake my genetic foundations .. or are you so narcissistically inclined as to believe that as long as you impact my life with your attention that it must be so? That to see and know you is to transform? If this is true .. if this is what Beauty does to a man than I am not a whole man for I have had no such transformation. I have sensed no such change within myself.
You are an addition .. something added ... something more. You are a gift .. but I am still here.
Me
My Dearest Beauty.. you ask what is it that I want?
I want you to know .. even when I am not there I want you to remember ...
Me.
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