If you’re compassionate with me, I will love you for life, and you will have a lover for life as well.

I don’t expect you to be my emotional support pet. I don’t need you ringing my phone to ask me how I am at all hours of the night. I don’t need you to park yourself on the front stoop, waiting to check up on me.

Yes, I am a hot-blooded woman, so I would be lying if I said that I don’t fantasize about a knight in shining armor coming to my emotional rescue — as Mick Jagger smartly stated in the song of the same name. Part of the joy of being a writer is to live vicariously through the ideas that I cook up, however far-fetched they may be.

No, that’s not really what I want at all. I am already all I need and more.

But I do want you to loosely hold on and not let go. Thanks, .38 Special, for taking up permanent residency in my bloodstream. I’ve had enough relationships that stifled me and my creativity for so long . People showed no consideration at all for me ,  and I have been involved in so many situations that tried so hard to extinguish my spirit—some even succeeded in doing just that.

Time and time again, I have been sent back to the drawing board to rebuild. But I emerge better and stronger than before. My past has made me who I am. You like me human, not mistake proof.

I may be struggling with things you might never understand. I don’t require anything from you other than “hello” and your presence. When it comes down to it, all we really want to know is that we matter to someone ,  however they choose to convey it.

I am wide-open. Take the lead and lean in to preserve the bond we’ve devoted so much time to nurture.

I want us to win so badly that I can taste it, much like how I can taste you. I am not ashamed to strongly surrender to these feelings bubbling over inside of me. Maybe we can’t win in the exact way that I want us to win. But as long as we’re above ground, we can win by staying important to each other. We can win by not blowing out the flame. We can win by touching lips, keeping the connection strong, and finding the sweet spot.

The truth is, the time is never going to be right to move forward until we decide it is. Maybe we will never decide. Maybe we will. All I know is that I don’t want to get too caught up in an idea of what the outcome should look like that we lose sight of what truly matters :  each other…because we can love while we’re on Earth to do it.

I want you close. So be compassionate with me. Compassionate first, passionate second. Understand me when I tell you that this is a lost art. This is the recipe for how to touch my soul in an unforgettable way and how I will always go about trying to touch yours. Maybe you won’t ever see things my way, and that’s okay.

For all of our similarities, we are two different minds, and I have always been more right-brained than left. But I need you to know that the world feels less cold when I know someone out there cares for me.

These days, I haven’t the slightest idea of what I mean to you. I mean, I think I know. Then, I am unsure. I guess it makes sense. As beautiful as words can be, people don’t really know what they mean to us unless we show them. Sometimes, “I am thinking of you” is often all it takes. I love it most when you show me your heart.

In art, as in life, intention and action equals magic, as long as we keep our light on and we never, ever let communication get lost because life is a challenge and always changing.

Real love is a rare and beautiful gift existing beyond rituals of seduction. Hearts come equipped knowing this.

If only we’d tune into their frequency.

~