Please stop!
Is it the way I hold the door?
The silence where I should have spoken?
Is it the softness at my core
That makes you want to leave it broken?
Do you mistake my grace for glass,
Something brittle, made to shatter?
Do you watch the hours pass,
Deciding that I do not matter?
What is the map you’ve drawn of me—
What hollowed space, what yielding light—
That makes you feel so wild, so free,
To sharpen teeth against the night?
Is it my blood, or is it yours?
The need to see if I will bend?
You pace before my open doors
To see just where I finally end.
I offer peace, you offer stone;
I offer a room, you offer a wall.
What seed of hate have you outgrown—
And did you think I wouldn\'t fall?
I am not made of fragile things,
Though I have let you think it true.
I’m tired of the dust that clings
To every cruelty I took from you.