i hate the shape of my own wanting.
i hate the way my heart opens its mouth like something half-starved, half-feral, waiting for the smallest emotion to be thrown its way.
a look. a word. a hand that lingers for a second too long.
i take it like a stray dog takes scraps from the pavement. grateful, humiliated, already ashamed of how quickly i swallowed it whole.
there is something unbearable about needing.
not just love, but proof of it. evidence. a thousand tiny reassurances stitched together just to make it through the night. as if love must be pressed into my hands again and again, or else it was never there.
i want to be wanted in a way that feels ugly to admit.
and when that certainty does not come, something inside me caves inward, a hollow place in my chest opening wider and wider until it feels less like a heart and more like an empty room echoing with all the things i cannot ask for.
because asking feels like kneeling.
like lowering myself to the level of my own hunger.
like saying, "please, please, please tell me i matter, tell me i am enough, tell me i am not something people only love in passing."
i despise that part of me.
the part that waits by the door. the part that listens for footsteps.
i hate how easily i ache.
how one moment of distance can turn into a storm inside me. how silence can become a blade. how absence can feel like abandonment even when i know better.
i hate that there is a void in me that nothing seems to fill for long enough to stop it from swallowing me whole.
something in me, it's endless and unnamed. something that keeps asking for more and then punishes me for asking. what a cruel thing it is to be both the wound and the hand pressing into it.
to long so deeply and then despise yourself for longing.
to crave warmth and curse yourself for shivering.
to want love and then look at your own heart with disgust, as if needing, itself, were something shameful.
sometimes i feel monstrous for it.
a creature made of need. a body stitched together from hunger. a soul crouched at the feet of affection, waiting for whatever crumbs fall from the table.
and the worst part is not the emptiness.
it is the self-contempt that follows.
the voice that says, "look at you. look how desperate. look how small. look how quickly you would trade your pride for a single moment of being held."
so i turn the hatred inward. as if i could punish the ache out of my ribs. as if shame could starve the need to death.
a quiet animal in my chest, whimpering in the dark, asking for tenderness i do not know how to give.
