you are pondering romantic love.

you’ve held it and lost it many times in your life. you’ve basked in its warm, soft glow and yearned for its return when the cold of loneliness sets in. somewhere along the way, though, you stopped … needing it. hungering for it.

and it’s strange, really, the way the desire for romantic love faded without you noticing. you replaced it with more reliable things. you found a soul mate in your best friend. a life worth living without someone sharing your bed. a home you feel comfortable in by yourself.

of course, you still want it, someday. you still hope to find it again, and that this time, it will stick around. but you don’t need it anymore to be happy and content. which, you suppose, will make its return into your life that much more beautiful; it will arrive when you are not looking for it.

you think back to when you were young and so afraid to face life without a lover, so sure that they were the ones to make you worth something. but you realize now that you are worth everything on your own. your value will never be determined by the ones who leave you. and it will never be determined by the ones who stay, either.

you are still everything when you are alone.

the chariot

you know

exactly

what you want.

you can feel it

bubbling,

pulsing,

twisting

inside of you.

but where there once

was only desire,

there is also now

willpower and determination.

you want it,

so you will have it.

you dream it,

so you will live it.

i remember exactly how it felt, the first time i believed in myself. i don’t remember how old i was or even what was going on, but i remember the feeling. at first, it felt foreign to me. but it was an adrenaline rush like no other i’d experienced. it was that feeling of rightness, that sensation i spent much of my teenage years struggling to find and hold on to. the constant ringing of i know i know i know deep inside me. i don’t know if i was 3 or 7 or 12. maybe it was right before my first piano recital. maybe it was as i stepped onto the soccer field. i could’ve gone out there and botched every second afterward, played every note wrong, missed every goal, but i don’t remember that. i just remember that for a moment, nobody could have told me i was not meant to be exactly where i was. i knew, beyond a doubt, that i was right where i belonged.

god, but when did i lose it?

i had had it once,

so when did it slip

through my fingers?

was it the first C on a math test

or the grade school bullies who

didn’t let me go a day unscathed?

was it my first heartbreak

or the friends that laughed at me

more than with me?