52: Monologue

There are wounds that don’t bleed red.  

They bleed memory.  

They bleed touch.  

And to grow - 

you have to cut them deeper.  

Not with a knife,  

but with will.  

A kind of internal amputation - 

a severing of need  

from what can never stay.

I once knew a man whose hunger wasn’t lust.  

He didn’t chase skin or silk or the sins of the flesh.  

He craved something far more dangerous - 

kindness.  

He longed to be held  

not for what he could offer,  

but simply because he existed.  

Because his heartbeat mattered  

to someone else.

He wasn’t starving for sex.  

He was starving for softness.  

A hand that didn't flinch.  

A voice that didn’t leave.  

A presence that felt like permanence.

He couldn't describe it,  

not fully - 

because what the soul yearns for  

doesn’t translate into language.  

It moves like smoke through the chest.  

It lives in glances.  

In silences.  

In the space between two people breathing  

the same moment  

at the same time.

The heart - 

it doesn’t think in logic or timing.  

It doesn’t yield to reason.  

It simply wants,  

and when denied,  

it doesn’t retreat.  

It rages.

People like to say the heart and mind are allies.  

But that’s a myth.  

A comforting lie.  

If they worked in harmony,  

love would be manageable - 

a balanced transaction.  

But it isn’t.

Love is a collision.  

Two storms meeting mid-ocean.  

Violent. Beautiful. Unforgiving.

And when two souls truly fuse - 

when they dissolve into each other - 

space vanishes.  

There is no air between them.  

No next step.  

Only this:  

You are mine.  

I am yours.  

There is nothing outside of this.

That kind of love doesn’t whisper.  

It doesn’t negotiate.  

It erupts.  

It declares itself  

in the scream of a soul that knows  

it has finally found its match.

It isn’t gifts.  

It isn’t romance.  

It’s the unshakable truth that you would tear yourself open  

just to keep them whole.  

That’s love.  

And that is why it costs  

everything.