Photo by Freepix
by Pat Foran
I am not afraid, she said.
I am not fantasy bonded (fantasy my ass), I am not trauma bonded (trauma as defined how?), I am not codependent (fuck anybody who thinks so), I am not addicted (FFS!), I am not selfless (ask a mirror), I am not a buy-it-on-faith healer not a caretaker not a redeemer not anybody who is not is not is not me.
I am me first always, me first for better, me first for worse, me first always.
I am silence so I can listen to it, I am equidistant, so I am here and there, I am temptation from hope, connecting now to what’s next and next to this love.
I am enormously alive and have enormous needs, enormous desires, enormous energy, and I am not afraid — to sing to fight to cry to hear to feel to love — not afraid to love you.
In this splinter of time that is our layered, lettered present, fearlessness turns spring into this side of summer, and slides summer into that side of your soul, and it make-believes me a cathedraled part of you that feeds hungry hearts and soothes forgotten hurts, for the sky is your song and my heart is the sea and your hand is a creche I hold in the crescent moon inside of me, and I am not afraid, not afraid of this moment, I will never be afraid, not of this love, not of this us, not of anything, I am not and not and not afraid.
Pat Foran is a writer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He, too, is not afraid. Find him at neutralspaces.co/patforan/ and on Twitter at @pdforan.
