To A Lover Unmet

I shall use your full first name

even if you have a nickname,

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because I want the unique vibration of every syllable,

every vowel and consonant, to resonate between us.

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I want to explore and learn everything about you.

I want to show you you’re safe to voice those things,

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mistakes and triumphs, devastations and victories,

the manifestations of your Darkness and your Light.

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I want the hidden stories of every tattoo, both

the coverups and the ones beneath them.

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Then, when I know the stories, I shall create characters

of them all, and they will tell fantastical tales of their

own lives, playing across the stage of your body.

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But I must warn you:

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You will see me tremble in my vulnerability when I

speak my own secret fears. That will be hard for me.

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I’ve never done that before.

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I will do things that require your forgiveness,

slip into old patterns, and the fear behind them

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will drive me to try and prove my

unworthiness of you.

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I can see those knotted behaviors more clearly now,

but seeing them and unraveling them are different things,

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and it will be all I can do just to voice my awareness,

tell you the stories from which it arises.

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You will be dealing with a frightened little boy in those moments.

Please treat him gently; he will be trembling like a skittish colt

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under saddle for the first time, trusting and untrusting all

in the same moment. Every instinct screaming for him

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to bolt, dash from the unknown, run from you

before you can run from him.

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It will be a complicated maze to navigate,

the reality beneath my veneers,

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but I tell you these things now, borne on these

winds of creativity and art, love and sorrow,

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a letter to a lover yet unmet,

truths revealed to a soul not yet connected

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so you can see, through the ether of it all:

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I’m trying.