Written to someone who is so sweet and wonderful, after I had to be honest with myself and realize that I first have to discover my own self before I can discover the depths of someone else.

Because you tapped me on my shoulder

When I was searching so deeply into the ruins of myself,

I did not see your shadow strolling in my direction at a distance.

I had my own shuffling of questions and doubts echoing so loudly in my ears

That I could not hear your footsteps trailing behind me through the debris,

Through the destruction of my lost self that I have allowed to mislead me.

Your smile falls before me and requests my gaze--

My gaze immediately shifts behind me,

For a moment deceiving myself

Into thinking you look at something beyond me--

Me, thinking that I am someone that no one else notices.

Not, that my not being noticed was the catalyst

That shoved me into myself,

But was the gnawing away at the frail framework

I once had constructed for myself--

For myself, I had pieced together a character

That, like the moon, reflected the glow of someone she wanted to be

Rather than radiate in the light of who she really was--

Who she was, fueled by the fire of her failures

To burn with desire into the dark.

I am trying to embrace the inner flame inside me,

Sifting through the charred fragments of illusion

To stretch my fingers toward the heat within myself,

Within myself to find a source of warmth

A torch that I can lift to carve my own path.

Because you shuffled through the ashes

And wrapped your own fingers around my own,

My own, blistered and stiffened and aching from searching,

I briefly stopped searching and my gaze at last greeted yours--

Yours, promising that I can cease reconstruction now.

Now, I can reconsider my decision to dig into the mess of myself.

I am trying to convince myself that maybe you are the light for which I seek.

Perhaps, it is selfish to think that I can stumble through the night on my own--

On my own, after all, the empty carcass of my past is so vast.

How could I fill it with a flame of my own--

Of my own stone striking steel trying to fill the hearth

With that warmth I feel when I lie alongside you?

You, kisses that melt so well in your blaze

That they scald my tongue.

My lips that sip them first gingerly, with caution, then cannot turn away

Again to taste the bitter chill of the dark unknown.

But, I now must deny your closeness.

You are a torch, it is true, but for your own path you tread.

I cannot allow you to lead me for myself.

For myself, I am deciding that self-discovery is difficult.

It is lonely and blackening and stings my outstretched fingers

That search ever for the light, yes.

But, the light that they grasp must be a light within me

And not a light that lies beside me

No matter how bright.

I must build from this destruction my true self on my own,

My own desire, still burning, that I must understand

Before I can long to fulfill the desires of your own.

Now, I must endure this search alone.