Locks and edges

You complain like a martyr.

You are right to feel slighted,

But I bristle at your woe.

I judge you for your hurt

And your assumption of hurt again.

Why are you like this?

Why do you keep letting them in

And then complaining that they left a mess

And stole the good silver?

Why don’t you lock the door?

Why didn’t I lock the door?

I don’t want to lock the door.

I want it open.

I want guests.

I want flow.

But I want a safe, loving home

And I’m afraid of both locking and opening the door.

I’m angry at you for teaching me fear.

But that wasn’t your fault –

You did your best.

You were taught hopelessness

And you came out with wary effort,

With dreams and goals protected by spring-wires,

With contingent openness,

Generosity with an expiration date far in the future.

I learned self-sacrifice from you

But I also learned striving,

And passion,

And love.

And when you got sick of self-sacrifice,

Of trying and failing to earn reciprocity,

Of no good deed goes unpunished,

I learned that, too,

And I learned to cope by burning a boundary with fire

Or poison or lightning,

Rather than tracing lightly in the sand around my feet

And gesturing to its place without apology or spite.

I want to love you forever,

I want to love you wildly and freely and with abandon,

And I want you to love me that way, too.

We can grow a luscious garden between us

By gently plucking weeds when they’re small and tender

And placing pretty rocks in the places they might grow,

Instead of letting them take over

For fear of upsetting roots of flowers,

Until the only thing left is to poison the soil

Or abandon the garden.

The fragilest of flowers may wilt or topple,

But they can better withstand a border carefully kept.

I want to love you like a garden

And I want you to love me back.

You gave me your best soil.

It held flowers and nutrients and minerals and earthworms

And weeds.

I am sorry for faulting you the weeds

And not thanking you enough for the earthworms.

I am sorry for demanding a perfect gardener,

And I am sorry for blaming you for your weeds

When you strove to collect fresh soil

So that I could learn to garden at all.

Thank you. I love you. I’m sorry. I love you.