acceptance

Slowly, slowly

Hesitant and small

Fumbling with keys and mouths to be pried open

Small hearts and big eyes

Perfumed shoulders that make your leather jacket smell like peonies

Crawl into the rectangular space and take the wheel that is called your heart and drive it, loudly and roughly up the cliff wall while all the world looks on.

You are quiet but your eyes meet the eyes of the world and you ache for the dazzling affirmation of a nod or a lifted hand.

Speak to us.

Drown us in worth and hold out your arms wide.

Smell the sweetness that we wear and use your eyes to crawl up that cliff wall.

So we stand, as high as the galactical clouds, in fierce anticipation, while our small hearts with keyholes and our big eyes with hopeful quicksand thirst and hunger and will always drink ocean water – what water can quench this thirst for recognition?

One bottle is not enough.

Undam these cascades and still our tongues will cry, never enough!

We will sit and bleed with painted eyes and lips and ringed fingers. We bleed and thirst atop the cliff wall while the clouds turn sour and thunderous.

Our climb was hard and harsh and our fall will be swift and stinging.

Harsh is the voice that carries rejection; harsher still the voice of acceptance, for behind its lily-covered eyes, a ghosted death-trap awaits. Call it acceptance or call it salt-water and kerosene.

This kerosene and saltwater will gnaw away at the face you carry; it will suck the smell of peonies from every fiber of leather you walk with, and will leave you unpainted, listless; falling headwards down the cliff wall into the ocean below.

Do you know what it means to be loved?