How many doors did I dare knock on in the dark, when I had no home in myself? How many eyes did I see peering at me through the glass, turning their locks when they saw the starved look in my own? It was a beggar and a stranger that sought shelter in you. You were right to give me the gift of your silence. And yet, still I stayed in that familiar place. For when you were silent, that quiet felt like the cold walls of my father’s house; it wore the face of my mother’s abandonment.
I’ve chased at the heels of love since I could walk. Reaching out with small hands that yearned only for a glance that never turned back. Some nights, I still look for those eyes.
To the siege I lay at love’s door, waiting for a surrender that would never come–I relent. It was a foolish boy who thought it took a war to be worthy. I forgive myself, for fighting for a birthright refused. Can you forgive the hole in my chest, and the desperate things I did to fill it?
I took the long way home, to find myself in that space that knew no sound. My weapons are all buried now, and rust in the dirt. May the mud stain my nails forever to remind me the only heart I should have been fighting for was mine.
– IG