Valentine’s Day, Codependent Love

Flesh and Bones
Her hands make love to his shoulders
Caress the tension from his neck
Fingers entwined in his soft curls
Her face buried in silver and brown strands.
Inhaling the heady scent that is him
She allows her tightness to slip away
Falling, falling into a dark warm mist
A vapor of safety created by his love.
Absence of pain, regret, loss or sorrow
Blankets of tenderness and devotion
Washed worn by life’s bleaching storms
More precious than diamonds and gold.
His devotion surrounds her flesh and her bones.
Thus, sleep is a cocoon which shelters her
Pillows of passions released time after time
Cradle the woman and her fragile dreams
Rocking her to sleep in his gently flowing river
Drifting on billows of unconditional love.
Floating to euphoria, wrapped around his back
She wonders, how is it possible that her love
Could increase beyond description, young and free
When time has removed the freedoms of flesh and bone?
She loves him beyond explanation, a rare dilemma
For a woman who was born to dance with words.
She loves, she loves and as his love enfolds her, she is sheltered.
She sleeps and she is secure because he is there beside her.

Your Love Is Raw
I thought my love was true…so why do I always fantasize
about leaving us behind, running away from me loving you?
Your love is raw, it is bloody, it is deep.
Your warm, obsessive blanket covers my eyes, my empty girly head,
shielding me, protecting me at night, yet not heavy enough to let me sleep.
Lying wide-eyed in our king-size bed, the buried fights numb my head.
Your love, my shroud, my bad, my dead.
You call me to your side each night, honey, come to sleep.
Not unlike a small child, I run to you and snuggle under my pink blanket
on my corner of the mattress awake in the dark long after you snore.
Into the dawn I weep, tears leaving their dirty marks.
The weight of your need to possess me and my need for you cements my life.
It this all I’ll ever feel, is this all I’ll ever be, your woman, your girl, your wife?
Your need is soft, it is strong, it is rough, it is binding, it is smothering, it is fluff.
Your need has taken over my life which doesn’t even make any sense.
Becoming nothing, wanting something, I sit and scour my mind, trying to find myself.
Can I take care of me, this woman, this girl who will not speak?
Standing on the outside, looking through the tinted glass of our storm door.
I don’t want to come inside. Oh yes, I am sure.
Am I running from us because of our today or am I running from our pain-filled past?
I don’t know anymore.
No place left to hide.
Your love surrounds me, it saves me, until it drowns me.
Your love is raw, it is bloody, it is deep.

I Love You
I love you does not mean that I will accept
your unacceptable behavior.
I love you does not mean that I will allow
you to hurt me emotionally whenever you choose.
I love you does not mean that I will let
you crush my spirit and wound my soul.
I love you does not mean that I will let you tell me
who I am or control my decisions.
I love you does not mean that I will allow you to hurt people I love.
I love you does not mean that I will not walk away from you,
if you do those things.
I have learned through God’s grace, that I can live without you,
but I cannot live without me.