I laid my heart bare before you entirely.
All the while, I kept uttering, “I wish I could lay my heart bare and let you see it.”
The shards of that heart severed me to my absolute core.
Seeking a fraction more validation, I never hardened into a callous emblem of cruelty; still less did I wear such ruthlessness as a badge of pride.
We are granted no sovereign immunity, whether in benevolence or in malice.
Do you comprehend the sensation?
It was as though I were a citadel of sand, not washed away by brazen tides but having eagerly welcomed becoming those brazen tides.
I yielded to those brazen tides just as one accepts whatever reckless bounty is thrust upon them.
Thereupon, I was stranded upon an uncharted path, with no avenue of escape on either side.
I could not ascend, and I could not descend.
Every audible frequency reached my ears, muffled and distant.
My senses had grown hypersensitive, strained to the point of fracturing.
Paralyzed by the dread that my footprints might prove imperfect, I stood incapable of taking those myriad strides.
I refuse to relinquish a single fragment of who I am, and I refuse to let go of a single piece of you.
Fictitious boundaries afford me certainty only up to a nebulous threshold.
No measure ever suffices.
In no measure is it ever sufficient.
In truth, this lingering restlessness has even gladdened me, and continues to do so.
To categorize happiness merely as happiness has always been fundamentally absurd.
Happiness is a colossal sponge, absorbing countless disparate emotions into its depths.
The same holds true for every other sentiment,
For thoughts, for lives, and for entire universes.
They have intertwined so recursively that naught remains save absolute chaos.
And the most bewildering convolution of all is that the mind perennially labors to weave that labyrinth into a cohesive whole.