Making Room For A Ghost
Love.
Perhaps the cruelest thing about you is how universally you’re known, yet you leave some of us strangers.
I question whether I’ve ever truly held you, or known what it feels like to be held by you.
Love;
A commoner, yet so rare.
A hunter, though I’ve never been the hunted.
A stranger to me, yet known by everyone.
Love;
The deadliest of assassins, infamous for wielding a single weapon:
Hope.
The world knows you by name, but I know you by reputation.
Or is it repetition?
Love.
I’ve heard your name whispered in the promises of forever, in the vows of loyalty, in the mouths of people who swear you live among them.
I’ve watched others welcome you into their homes, pull up a chair at their tables, call you family.
And still, I’ve stood at the edges of the room, wondering what it is about me that makes you so reluctant to stay.
Love;
A thin blanket, just enough to keep the cold from killing me, but never enough to make me warm.
Never enough to let me forget how cold I am.
I’ve learned to be grateful for the scraps of warmth, careful not to ask for more, lest the little I’ve been given be taken away.
I’ve mistaken being tolerated for being wanted.
Being needed for being loved.
And silence for peace.
Love;
One true form, yet all I’ve ever known are the imposters.
The ones who embrace me with open arms, provided my hands are full of something they need.
The ones who call me selfish when I finally set something down.
The ones who remember my existence when there’s something I can give, then forget me the moment I have nothing left.
Tell me, Love, is that your doing?
Or have I simply spent so long searching for you that I’ve learned to recognize your absence as a familiar face?
I’ve tried to make a whole out of the things people left behind.
Tried to build something beautiful from the broken pieces of every place I thought you lived.
And when the picture wouldn’t come together, I blamed my hands.
Perhaps I was too difficult to love.
Perhaps I asked for too much.
Perhaps I should have given more.
It’s remarkable, Love, how easily you convince the empty-handed to apologize.
How you teach the starving to feel guilty for being hungry.
How you make the person freezing believe the cold is their fault.
And yet, no matter how many times I tell myself I’ve had enough, there you are again.
Love;
My oldest tormentor.
My most faithful stranger.
Whispering that perhaps the next piece will fit.
Perhaps, if I can just become a little easier to love, you will finally recognize me.
But I’m tired, Love.
Tired of searching for you in people who only seem to notice me when I am useful to them.
Tired of measuring my worth by how much of myself I can afford to give away.
Tired of feeling guilty for the simple, unforgivable act of having needs of my own.
And most of all, I’m tired of wondering why everyone else seems to know you so intimately, while I have spent my life trying to prove I deserve an introduction.
So here I am, Love.
Still holding the pieces.
Still searching for the picture.
Still wondering whether the beautiful thing I’ve been trying to make was ever meant to be mine.
Or whether I’ve spent a lifetime trying to assemble you from fragments of people who only ever wanted pieces of me.
Love;
I don’t know if I’ve ever truly met you.
But I know I’ve spent a lifetime making room for you.
And I’m beginning to wonder how much of myself I’ve lost
waiting for you to call it home.
