a stripper named equality

I’m in love with you because you make me feel safe. It sounds corny and vague. People always talk about feeling safe with someone and you wonder what it even means. I still don’t really know. All I know is that when I’m with you, I feel like I’m clutching a giant thing of pepper spray or reliving a moment of being carried to bed by my parents when I was five years old and fell asleep in front of the television. All day long, I can feel fragile, like a raw nerve, and when I come home to you, it’s like I just put on the thickest winter coat and installed bulletproof windows in my apartment. ‘Honey, I’m home…and no longer terrified.

Sometimes I feel like a caretaker of a museum — a huge, empty museum where no one ever comes, and I’m watching over it for no one but myself.

To whom do I owe the woman I have become?