I can teach you how to love me.
If you take the time and truly want to know. I can teach you what each of my head tilts mean. I can teach you all the secrets of my body. I can teach you how to handle me when i am moody, how to console me when i am crying, what to say when i act strange or distant around you.
I can show you my wicked smile, the one that only comes out sometimes, the one i put on only when the root at the base of me and all the darkness of the world come prancing up on my spine when i have to let it wiggle and scream because without that it would consume me, as i become the immediate channel for something great and deep and wide and appalling.
I can teach you why and how it hurts when i don’t get attention. I can teach you, that sometimes i will push you away, but inside i will slowly die because i do not want that, and i regret every moment and secretly hope you will not listen and will not go… that in reality i want you to hold me tight and lift me in your arms, and never let me go… i want you to fight for me…
I can teach you how while i have claws, i have choice about when i use them, i can teach you how to declaw me faster and better each time.I can teach you how to preempt my tantrums, how to make it safe for me to come out and play, how to bring forth my love like shining beacon of depth and warmth and delight and freedom.
I can teach you what to do when i reach for you – or maybe you already know. Maybe there are things you already know about me, about how to be with me, just from the way i move or sit or stand or share or the way i light up or shut down.
I can teach you these things, offer them up like so many pebbles, worn and smooth and pure, because i found them and ground them away down into their essence, made them soft by my own tears and trauma. I can bring them to you like a secret offering, fetching from depth of my soul and my anguish, inspired and transpired by the innocence with witch a child places total trust and responsibility in the hands of people who don’t and can’t know everything right all the time.
I learned these things, in fact, to teach you.
When it was hard and i wanted to stop and i wanted it to stop and i wanted to make it stop, when i wanted to arrest the humiliation or destroy the awakening or hold onto the hate or shutter the screams or beat my fists across walls or cover my ears and board up my eyes and silence my mouth forever, i thought of …
The only thing i need from you, the only gift i need you to give me, the only rendition and chorus i require, is for you to ask…
I need you to ask.
Ooaklina 