Oh How Little I Want

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I’m not looking for a hero to save me or some grand romance to sweep me off my feet. No, it’s much simpler than that.

I’m looking for a calmness that tucks around me like a warm blanket in winter.

I want to be all consumed by passions fire but not singed by the flames of desire.

I don’t want to be called pretty, for I am a fearsome thing to behold. I never trust anyone who can’t look past my crumbling shell to the hell I’ve endured. Tell me I’m strong, that my eyes shine with happiness when I see you, or that you like how relaxed my body is when you’re near.

Tell me my dark soul lights yours up from within or that my off-key humor and sarcasm make your day. 

Let me practice trusting before you hand me your heart or before you reach for mine.

Tell me your secrets and let me share mine, whispers sealed into darkness and never to be revealed. Show me your childhood, and I’ll tell you about mine. For me, what’s in the past is in the past and can never be changed. I won’t judge you as long as you give me the same.

When you finally touch me, don’t rush; others before you didn’t take the time to trace my scars, to question their painful existence, or why they still manage to burn. You see, in this life, I learned if you trusted mindlessly, you became blinded by their rejection in the end. You’ll add more scars, more bruises to your soul.

But we’re told just to let go, to move on, even if your body is a multicolored tapestry of fingertip bruises, unhealed scars, and picked-at scabs. 

Through the blood, sweat, and tears of such travesty do I hold out hope for a day I don’t get those disdainful stares from across the way or the hurtful sarcasm that wounds me deep as a constant reminder of everything I’ve messed up in my wake? 

You see, my dreams are scarce, but I live primarily in nightmares of my own making and built on constant misunderstandings. I fear I wasn’t meant ever to be happy, even if I find beauty and a smile in such little things. I feel I’m meant to stay this sad little soul, flitting through this myriad of feelings with nary a say in what I wanted.

It’s like I sit in front of a window and watch as the lives I build constantly go up in flames due to being misunderstood. When I think I’m most happy in my life, I’m usually proven wrong in a fraction of the time it took to build these foundations, and one huff and it’s gone again. 

I find myself picking through ground zero for the millionth time, but I’m dejected, and my soul is sore for thinking this was it for me. That I finally found the life I could be happy with.

But healing and growth have awful timing, and it sent everything into a spiral that left me on my ass. So again, I never needed a hero or much of anything, really. All I wanted in life was for just one thing to go in my favor.

Just one thing to last, and for that thing not to be what I must clean up after it shattered into a million little pieces. Like all the stars I wished on, those slivers of shining glass lay around my bare feet, and I still find myself sobbing about all I wanted was just an ounce of happiness.

I sometimes even think the vastness of the universe misunderstands me too.

Maybe that’s just what life is for someone as broken as me.