“Let someone love you just the way you are – as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as unaccomplished as you think you are. To believe that you must hide all the parts of you that are broken, out of fear that someone else is incapable of loving what is less than perfect, is to believe that sunlight is incapable of entering a broken window and illuminating a dark room.”
With us,
there is no other half.
No “you complete me"s.
No “without you I’m nothing"s
Yesterday
my flight was cancelled
and I wanted to run to another
airline counter and
buy the next ticket home,
just so I could see you that night.
I miss you. Acutely.
My missing is a fire licking
at my throat. The absence of you
is a flame threatening to pour
out of my mouth and shake hands
with my loneliness. I’m burning
in it. But I’m still something.
So we don’t do incompletes.
We don’t tell each other
we’re nothing without the other.
You’re not here and I’m lonelier. I’m less person
and more flame. I’m licking
smoke off my bottom lip
and tasting all of the ways I can
miss you, but still, I’m something.
Always.
Still Something, Lora Mathis