i love like flowers and fire…
i don’t know any other way.
soft and vulnerable,
and wild and burning…
with my heart broken. wide. open.
and even though he came in like wildfire,
he was just. broken.
and hardened. and filled with an
ugliness raging inside of him
and he thought that if he raged
hard enough against me
that he could rage an ugliness out
from inside of me too.
then he could say, “see, it’s you.”
that he could be so hard to love that
he could make me feel hard to love too.
but i just softly left the room.
a graceful exit.
and i wrote all my feelings down to shed
his hardened residue.
and to remind myself of all the ways
that there are such beautiful and tender
things in me… always.

– butterflies rising