Harley and the half-burned letter

This is the final rebellion. In the unfinishedness. The parts I’ll never send. The parts you’ll never read again.

I hope your badge is still intact,
The one on your Harley jacket, “Sex Champion.”
Bold. Confident. Delusional.
I hope it still makes you feel like a man,
Even though your idea of seduction
Was mouths full of fire,
Crawling on bare knees,
Through the river of desire,
Only to wake parched,
With desert dust settled at the back of our throats.
You called it love.
I called it hunger.
You dressed silence as mercy,
Hiding all the ugliness
Beneath your oh-so-polite exterior.
And the cruelty in how carefully
You unbuttoned my soul that night.

You said sex wasn’t the point. Until it was. Until that was all your tongue-tied truth, Reeking of cowardice, Could muster in the face of my unburdening, As if intimacy were something to ration. As if my body could be borrowed, While a “no vacancy for the heart” sign Hung quietly at the foot of your door. You wore rebellion like your tattoos, Defiant smiles, Smart-ass remarks. But the day I held you, Your whole chest collapsed into me, And for a moment, I felt every forgotten dream and heartache, You'd buried under all that shiny armor.

No, I wasn’t perfect.
I left, over and over,
Trying to drown my own heart
In floods of indifference,
So it wouldn’t drag me back,
To the tender place, I discovered in the safety of your hands, A place that now only echoes,
With the resounding desperation of my own voice.

Still,
I don’t regret how I showed up to love you.
Even when it felt like pouring gasoline
Into my own wounds,
Ready for the burn and the wreckage,
If it meant you'd find
A safe landing right in the middle of the smoke.

You were my softest war. And somewhere in you, I hope it still echoes, Not my name. Not my perfume. Not the way I kissed your nose. But the way I never made you feel small For being so afraid, To hold things, You had no idea how to love.