08/20/2025
Will you hold me, not as one grasps a fragile object to be repaired, but as one embraces a storm in its raw and uncontainable force? Hold me as you would hold the tide, knowing it cannot be tamed, nor should it be. Let me weep, rage, tremble, unravel, without your impulse to gather the pieces, without fixing, without the reflex to weave me into something smoother, quieter, easier. Let me fracture in your presence while you remain the steady witness, unafraid of my jagged edges. For what I seek is not the balm of remedy, but the sacredness of being seen without condition.
Will you stand without the armor of ego, without the restless hum of āAm I enough? Am I doing enough?ā and allow yourself to be the cathedral of stillness in which I might collapse? Love me not with the anxious striving of performance, but with the spaciousness of acceptance, where nothing must be earned, nothing must be proven, nothing must be perfected.
Will you shield me, not by barricading the world from my hurt, but by standing between me and my own instinct to disappear behind masks? My veil is a practiced thing, stitched from a thousand quiet fears that I am unworthy of being loved as I am. Tear it not from me. Simply wait until I let it fall, and when it slips from my trembling hands, let your gaze remain steady. Look into me, so deeply that you meet not the polished image but the fractured truth. Look until you feel the tremor of my wounds as though they were your own heartbeat. Look until the darkness spills into light and still, still, you do not turn away.
Will you kiss me, then? Kiss me not as rescue, not as an answer, not as a mask to cover what is difficult. Kiss me as though the purity of your being seeks no disguise. Kiss me without shrinking, without flinching, without bending yourself into the man you think I want. Kiss me raw, unfiltered, unshaped by expectation, as though your lips have known all along that love is not a transaction but an unveiling. And then, will you stay? Not only in the gentleness of dawn, but in the storm of midnight, in the silence when words are broken, in the long ache of uncertainty.
Stay when my voice shakes. Stay when my truth burns. Stay when my eyes plead with you to see what even I fear to touch. Stay, not because it is easy, but because it is true. For love is not measured by the ease of its keeping, but by the courage of its endurance.
Will you trust yourself enough to believe in the immensity of your soul? To know that your essence, unvarnished, untamed, is already sufficient, already luminous, already beyond measure. Trust that within you lies a strength vast enough to hold not only your own shadows but mine. Trust that your presence, unaltered, is the greatest gift you could ever give.
And in this moment, this raw, unpolished, beautifully sacred moment, know that you are cherished not for what you fix, nor for what you prove, but for what you are. Know that I am undone by the immensity of you, and that my gratitude is not the soft sigh of comfort, but the fierce, unyielding hymn of love itself. For here we meet, stripped of illusions, clothed only in truth. Here we meet, and the meeting itself is eternity.
Katie Kamara
*xuality *xuality