Funerals of the Men Who Tried to be My Muse

I used to think love was supposed to hurt,

that devotion was measured by how much pain I could endure—

So I stayed when I should have walked away,

called lust holy,

and mistook desire for deliverance—

I buried pieces of myself in his bedroom,

convinced that resurrection could come from a man’s touch—

But what rose instead was silence—

A still, sacred voice inside of me saying:

This is not love

So I began holding funerals,

not for the men

but for the illusions I draped them in—

I laid to rest the belief

that love equals sacrifice without reciprocity;

that intimacy without soul could ever fill me—

And in the ashes of those funerals,

something bloomed—

A wild rose from the cracks

A holy garden within my own chest—

Every tear watered the soil

Every surrender became a seed—

Love returned to me in a new form—

Not his lips, not his promises,

but the quiet communion of me with myself—

A love that was both tender and fierce;

both sensual and sacred—

A holy sensuality that asked nothing of me but truth.

Now I know,

real love does not chain, it consecrates—

It does not demand that I diminish,

it calls me deeper into my own becoming—

So I honor the funerals;

I honor the graves—

But I do not return to them,

for love found me here

in the soil of surrender.

And she is enough

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