Chris Wood

She is the one person I don’t want to be protected from, the one closest to me. That is why I keep her close. I am safe in her honesty. I trust her to tell me herself as she changes. I trust her to tell me when the rumors are false and even when the rumors are true. If I am to be hurt, it should be by her hand, the one that holds my heart for the world to see. She knows best how to heal the wound she’s created. How then to heal when the wound is opened by another. A rumor, perhaps, but rumors become their own truth after a while. People believe what they want, what they see, what they hear. The name is familiar, perhaps from her own lips. But I don’t remember it echoing there. Not when it mattered most. Not when I stood bare before her, offering myself, the whole of my future, in exchange for an end of it all. Willing to sacrifice what I could not bear to lose after all. I left the power in her. Asked her to battle away the demons with me, and still she withheld. I know what happened was not right. No one should have to watch their love fall in love with another. It burns through flesh and bone.

I would walk through fire for her, destroy myself for her to know that she will scoop up my ashes and I am reborn with her. Like the phoenix. All I ask is everything. An equal exchange. I give the whole of myself, is it so much to ask in return? My ashes, my failures, for yours? Life offers little perfection- the snowflake, the blade of grass, the grain of salt. I don’t seek perfection, I seek it’s opposite. “I am flawed, flayed open for you. My bloodied hand reaches for you, take it, if you will, despite its stain. Show me where I can rest and be safe. Bear my burden and I will bear yours.” It is easiest that way. What is the proverb? ‘Misery loves company?’ No, not that. ‘Many hands make light work’. I feel like Atlas, alone with the sky on my shoulders. I am broken. I am dust. Then the wind comes and there is nothing left. Nothing but memory of once great empires, built in the clouds.