What I Want

I want someone who gives me the freedom to be me.  You don’t have to understand all the bits and pieces of me, just give me the space to explore myself and discover what I love and what I want to change.  Love me because I’m changing.  Constantly.  Daily.  

I want someone who will stand in the rain with me and marvel.  Listen to the differences in the sounds when it hits the windows of the house, or the roof, or the top of the car.  Put your arms around me and your head over mine to try to keep the raindrops from falling into my eyes.  

I want someone with a hunger for knowledge.  Who wants to learn new things solely for the satisfaction of knowing.  Someone who will share knowledge and information without being proud or haughty.  Who delights in discovering how things work and why.  

I want someone who tells me I’m beautiful every day.  Someone who says it when I’m dressed to the nines for a night on the town, and when I’m in my ugliest sweatpants with smeared makeup and my hair a mess.  Someone who says it when we are naked and sweaty together, and when I’ve been up all night with a sick child.  

I want someone to go on adventures with. Someone who knows that this world is so much bigger than the corners we have known. Someone who wants to see the crevices heretofore unknown without prejudice or judgement. Someone who delights in the new and the unexpected and welcomes it as part of the understanding of life.

I want someone to open doors for me. Not because it is expected or a socially mandated requirement. But because you want to stay by my side the entire walk up to my side of the car or because your arms are longer and you like the way I duck underneath them to walk in the door with you.

I want someone who sees the unique, magical creature that I am and considers themselves blessed to be part of my life.  Someone who is also magically unique and slowly opens the doors to his soul so I may peek and marvel at all the bits that make him him.  

Don’t try to put me in a box that will neatly fit into your life.  It won’t work.  What I want is not neat or tidy.  It will explode all over you and me and everything we know.  It will touch us in places we thought no one would ever see.  What I want is big and bright and burns like the sun.   What I want will change me.  And you.  Irrevocably.  

Let's Go Slow

Let’s go slow.

I know this may seem silly since I invited you into my bed after having known you for only five days, but let’s go slow.  

What we have right now is the beginning.  The beginning of something magical.  

Let’s revel in the newness of it.

We may not have many more beginnings again, so let’s go slow.  

My hips fit perfectly into the crook of yours while we sleep.  Let’s enjoy that.

My head fits perfectly under your chin when we dance.  Let’s enjoy that, too.

Your lips fit perfectly in between mine when we kiss.  I definitely enjoy that.

I love your eyes,

your laugh,

the tilt of your chin.

You love my eyes,

my lips,

the way I surprise you.

Let’s keep loving these things.  

The small parts of ourselves and each other.  

Eventually we will love the sum of all the parts.

But not yet.

Once we love it all, there is no going back.  No slowing down.  

Once we love all of the great things, we are forced to see some of the not-so-great things.  

I know they’re there.  I’m not scared of yours.  I’m scared of showing you mine.  And maybe you already know they’re there, too.  But I’ve been hurt.  I’m not ready for you to see.  I’m not ready to know that you see.  

So let’s go slow.  Let’s take it one tender kiss at a time.  One long, powerful, soul quenching kiss. One earth shattering fuck.  Let me hear you say my name while I’m shaking in your arms.  One at a time.  For today, and tomorrow, and however many tomorrows we have after that.  

You're Not In Love with Me

You’re not in love with me.  

You’re in love with the concept of who I used to be.  

When things were easy.  When you got your way.  

You want the meek little girl I used to be.  Who never challenged you.

You want someone who will adore you.  Who will sit back and let you be the center of the universe.  

You want someone to tend your house and raise your kids.

You want someone for you.  

You do not want me.

I want someone who challenges me to be better.  Not more pretentious.  

I want someone who makes me laugh with them, not at someone else.

I want someone who delights in my children, even when they are screaming and fighting and generally acting crazy.  Because that’s who kids are and what they do.  Not someone easily irritated at the noise and chaos.  

I want someone who wants to change the world with me.

I want someone who delights when I pour into them, not someone who expects it and gets mad when I don’t do it.  

I want someone for me.  

I do not want you.  

So where do we go from here?  

We walk away.  

Gently.

Peacefully, I hope.  

Acknowledging that we are not the right person for the other and wishing each other well.

We won’t linger on our hurt feelings, because feelings fade.  Especially when we don’t tend the fire.  

We will stop trying to change each other and recognize that the other is a good person, just not the right person.  And that’s okay.  

I wish you happiness.  And peace.  And it’s okay if it takes a while for you to find it.  The journey is the place where we grow.  

love me in the quiet, a poem

love me in the quiet

with my makeup off

and my hair a mess

love me in my sweats

curled up with a book

in someone else’s world

love me when i’m crying

when my heart is breaking for someone else

when it hurts so much i can’t breathe

love me when i’m angry

filled with righteous indignation

or even just petty spite

love me when i’m happy

with the laughter bubbling over

and a twinkle in my eye

love me in the bedroom

with your head on my chest

trying something new

love me in the kitchen

where i dance and sing

where i am the master of culinary creation

love me when i’m sleeping

teeth brushed, face washed

my body pressed against yours

love me when i’m busy

getting the kids ready for school

running ceaseless errands

love me in the quiet

when everything around us has stopped

when it is just you and me

when the day is filled with an abundance of nothing that turns into everything

when everything else fades away

love me there

Broken Heart

I am 32 years old. Five foot six, one hundred and forty five pounds. I have loved. I have lost. I have pushed away. 

I've had children so my belly has an extra bit of squish on it. Stretch marks. Cellulite. I don't hate it. It's just my belly. It sticks out if I eat a particularly cheesy or bread heavy meal. But I eat it anyway. Because it's delicious. 

My breasts also have stretch marks. And they are not pert or perky. But they have nourished new life and I love them for that. My nipples are a little desensitized after nursing, but that just makes them better for rough play during sex. I like it when it hurts a little. 

My ass is small and flat. Like every other part of my body- at least, all of my most womanly parts- I have stretch marks on my hips. They remind me of the days I grew life. They make me feel god-like. 

Don't spank me when we are having sex. Or ever. Don't remind me of the childhood I fled as soon as I was able. It doesn't end well for you and I hate trying to explain. 

My first vacation was at the hands of a novel. My first escape from reality. The first time I realized that everyone has a story and that mine is not the only one that makes me cry. Books taught me empathy, and compassion. They taught me history and of suffering I would never know. I have had great loves. And I have had bitter disappointments. I have cried with the lowest and I have lamented with the highest. I have learned that no matter the circumstance of your birth, you will hurt. You will have heart wrenching pain. You will suffer. Misery finds us all at one time or another. 

Sometimes I wonder who I was in a previous life. If I knew love. If I knew heartache. I'm sure that I did. The secret is to be open to it at any time. 

They come had in hand, you know. Love and heartache. When you open your heart to someone, it will get broken. It needs to get broken. The secret is to open your heart so wide and so often that it will take more than one person to shatter it. 

I'm not talking only of romantic love.  Yes, it is perhaps the easiest love to feel. Certainly, it is the first "grown up" love that we feel. But it is not the only kind. 

Opening your heart can be as simple as listening to this sixty eight year old man tell you about the great love he had for his dead wife and crying with him for his loss. There, your heart is broken. 

It can be sitting with a child and listening to her tell you about her day because you know she doesn't have anyone to talk to at home. There, your heart is broken. 

It can be raising someone else's child for two years and handing him back when the time comes. Your heart shatters into a thousand pieces and you sink to the floor wondering if anyone will ever love him like you did and if he will ever remember you, simultaneously hoping that he does and praying that he doesn't. There, your heart is broken. 

It can be watching that goddamn ASPCA commercial and hearing that song come on and looking around your house to see if you can take in just one more rescue. There, your heart is broken. 

Your broken heart is the most beautiful thing you can offer the world. Let your heart break. Start in a book. Or with your neighbor. Everyone has a story. If you listen long enough, you will hear it. 

My body might show the signs of my age or the children I've borne. You can judge me on my flabby belly or my flat ass. But until you look at my broken heart, you will never know me. It's the kind of thing you can only see with your heart. 

Bring me your broken heart, and I'll bring you mine. Together we can explore the shattered pieces. And someday, maybe the shattered pieces of yours can combine with the shattered pieces of mine, and a whole new broken heart will begin to form. That would truly be the most beautiful thing of all.