I give you my heart

Tendons trailing from where I ripped it back

Veins leaking, showing traces of all I once was

I give you my soul

Keep it in its bandages, in its torn wrap

Don’t pick at the edges or the freshly healed scars

I give you what is left of me

Leave it open

Leave it bleeding...

Incapacity me with your love.

Tie me down with ribbons and bows.

Caress me with your words and whispers.

Demonstrate with your fingers all you cannot say.

Solidify that this love will not die....

Little red riding hood

Didn’t have to wander into darkness but chose to

Lured by the ache that lingers in the nothingness...

Perhaps

We lost more than language along the way

Perhaps there were other things that slipped with the words

Like the kinship between men

Or the safety woman once felt in the night

Perhaps as we became civilized

We lost something that

Can’t be placed into words...

Do men worry like women do

do they carry the weight in their heart,

the sorrow in their movements

the apologies in every word.

Do men worry like women do

or are we given it at birth,

not a trace from Eve,

but our shared scar left by generations of women

held back from acknowledging the truth,

men do not worry because they give us their burdens to hold....

Monsters don’t live under the bed

Good doesn’t always conquer all

Fairy godmothers can’t grow wings

Princes only worry about saving themselves

Princesses fall to their death in attempt to leave their towers

Life never gives us the chance for happily ever after...

Lost

A little afraid

Things used to make sense

But there is tomorrow to look to

And a future she isn’t sure she has the strength for...

There are some days, she wishes she never found the note. She wishes she had walked by it, thought of a piece of trash, and threw it away. She keeps it with her, always tucked in her breast pocket, close to her heart. It’s pages have been folded over and over, the crease is beginning to break, the ink beginning to fade on the edges where her fingers have left their marked.

She can feel its words...

Always swimming deep

Avoiding the dark of man

Seeking only light...

Death, her siren song

No one bothered to tell her

That she had a choice...