

N RMAL DESIRES
 
allusion: when something is too painful to call it by its real name
 
someone, someday, will do their damnedest to show you how the d a m a g e done unto you was undeserved
 
(
you should do your damnedest to let them
)
it’s like you’re in a vacuum
: it’s like you’re in a black hole
a magnetism that comes from deep, unfettered, cosmic yearning
the inch of space between you is the s p a c e o f f e a r, o f caution, of worry, of knowing that once you close the inch, everything you have ever known or thought you knew will change
 
i think it is always better to close the inch, even if it b r e a k s y o u r g o d d a m n h e a r t
(
its almost troublesome, the power a kiss can have
)
especially if it breaks your goddamn heart
 
(
)
cause then you can rebuild, loving the right you
 
despite what others have told you, you have
never
been anything to be ashamed of
i am speaking plainly.  
the kiss i count as my first both drowned and revived me. there was a moment of hesitation - a simple disbelief in occurring reality - and then we inhaled the same air. i did not initiate it. could not have, no matter how badly i had wanted it. she took the clandestine and made it sinfully common. that was the first time i ever felt shook by the power of someone else’s desire for me. i have realized that had it been my choice, i would have kept pining. kept to my side of the bed. because i was so fucking scared, and because in these moments, it is most often the person with less to lose who decides to let you know that they have seen you.
 
sometimes it is harder to stay silent than it is to admit that a single person had the power to both devastate you to the very innermost of yourself
that painful, shameful, tender truth
(people should learn to tread lightly : people should seek to earn the power they have over us)
 
two types of intimacy:
&
i fucking need you, w a n t — > d e s i r e, the lightness yet per manence of fi r s t t o u c h , magnetism, undoing
i came here to admit that you had a profound affect on my life, to speak plainly, to show you wounds that i have never in my life attempted to show to anyone but you, sweet and ter rible you
(
)
h e r e i s t h e m o m e n t t h a t m a r k s y o u a s a n ‘ o t h e r ’ two sames, one kiss
and it is no one’s fault, this ‘o t h e r i n g ’ because it turns out you aren’t an ‘other’ at all but just a newer version of yourself, one that’s a little bit closer to an honest existence
 
and while you might not have known it until that instance,
they knew well before that you w e r e deserving of love and that is what terrifies you - not the source of love but that the damage done unto you in the name of love was, in fact,
not love at all
& that you are worthy, and have been all along
“that, soft or hard, love was an act of heroism”
Ta-Nehisi Coates