8-2

What did you want?

I don’t know who you thought I should be.

Her, but stronger? That’s a lie for yourself. You cannot love someone weak and seek them in a warrior.

I am warrior because I shook off the chains.

I will not quit my battles because I diminish you.

I will not pause my fight because beside me you feel smaller.

You’ve crawled inside your mind and built an enemy of me, when you could have had an unceasing partner.

Is it her, instead, you wanted me to be?

Doe-eyed and broken. Delicate, declaring gentle determination. A flower in a rainstorm. You see yourself in her, I think. She would need your help. She will follow you as you grow together, fragile fronds, both so certain of your own fragility. She makes you feel deeper, more whole, substantial. Beautiful and artistic.

Who can grow when they only follow?

I came from the mud. I bloom where I am planted. I am cut down time and again I regrow fiercer, a thorny weed, hardy twisted branches. I do not follow.

You can have your silly boyish fantasies. Tears on lashes, pretty words and brown eyes that look to you for direction.

I am tired of wanting you. I did not need you, maybe that was my flaw, when you looked at me sideways and I felt your disappointment seeping into me.  

But I wanted you. I wanted you beside me. Not ahead, pretending to know the way, not pulling behind, heels in the dirt. Navigating as my equal.

I made my own road long ago. I am the cat that walks by herself. I am the lotus blossom in a stagnant pool.

I need no one.

But I wanted you.