He says “you’re lovely”

Just looking at the red lamp, ribbons of smoke passing by and some song from The National that seems to come from my chest rather than from the speakers.

I did not expect to be here.

There’s a poem bubbling. I want to tell him, but I don’t…I’m afraid it might go away.

He touches me ever so gently, in a way that I tried on myself many years ago when I began my tantra practice. And cried rivers of tears realizing I had been really wanting to be touched like that.

It took some time and some hardcore devotion and self love to allow an external reality to reflect that back to me but here we are, naked and chatting about anything under the sun, a Wild Hag and a Poet with a skeptical mind.

He asks me questions and remembers things that I said, and he makes me feel like I’m easy to be with.

In a lifetime of amplifying people’s projections it’s a beautiful, simple, magical thing to just be.

To feel looked at but not scrutinized.

To be wanted the way I am.

Invited.

Sometimes I feel a shadow passing by, but weights of the Soul always make some noise before dissolving. It’s ok.

I want to tell him about that time in Rochester where I sat on the washer in my ex’s apartment and cried for an hour after sex, because everything hurt and I hadn’t been kissed in a month and I felt so worthless and lonely. Maybe I feel that if I can deliver just how broken I have been sometimes, he will understand why it’s taking me so long to open up.

But he already understands.

He says “you’re safe”.

He says “you’re lovely”.

And I believe him, my whole body does.

I am aware that this is possible because I am ready. He would’ve still been lovely a few months ago, but I wouldn’t have been ready. I’m writing this as a reminder to everyone who is really out there experiencing life (if you think you have it all figured it out you’re probably in the wrong place here anyway): your relationship with yourself sets the tone for the other relationships that you have. It’s not that you can’t be loved if you don’t love yourself.

It’s that it’s hard to feel it. To accept it. To let it in.

My circle of friends and Soul family has been consistently amazing, but only recently I have been able to accept that as part of my reality.

Be the parent you needed when you were a child. Learn to be that parent. If I leave one contribution to this world, I hope it’s this one.