Don’t rush me.
I want you to earn every inch.
I’m not something you take—
I’m something you discover,
one slow, deliberate touch at a time.
Don’t try to fix me.
I’ve made peace with my scars.
Some of them will cut you if you trace them, touch them with the whisper soft tips of your fingers
but if you’re brave enough,
you’ll learn they tell you exactly where to kiss me.
Touch me like I’m fragile, like a delicate glass that will shatter with the slightest pressure
but hold me like you know I could set you on fire.
Kiss me until I forget where I end
and you begin.
Be here—fully here.
Not just with your body,
but with your attention, your breath,
your eyes that don’t wander when my voice trembles in a whisper of pain.
Feel the weight behind my silences, behind the quiet that threatens to break me
and stay long enough to hear what I can’t yet say aloud.
Ask me how I’m really doing—
but be ready,
because the truth won’t be sweet. It will be ugly, messy and unforgiving.
I’ll give you my sharp edges
and my softest places,
sometimes in the same breath.
Don’t flinch.
I notice when people flinch.
I am both the ache and the cure,
the storm and the shelter, the light and the dark.
If you can take the rain,
you’ll be rewarded with the heat that comes after.
Don’t love me like you’re on borrowed time, like there is a limit to the seconds, minutes, hours you have with me.
Love me like I’m the only place you want to spend forever.
Like you’d rather be lost in me, in my eyes, in my heart, in my space more than safe anywhere else.
And if you can’t do that—
walk away now.
Because once I let you in,
there is no halfway, no turning back, no way out.
I’ll love you until it burns.
And I’ll expect you to burn with me.
And when you stay—
stay with your whole fire lit.
Match me flame for flame,
or get out of the blaze.
Because I won’t dim myself for anyone,
and I won’t love from a distance.
If you can’t meet me in the heat,
don’t touch the spark.
But if you can—
I’ll burn this world down just to keep you warm.
