#quitter

softening the sharp edges of my tongue, disciplining my hands the patience they never learned, because love, when it looks like you, makes even a storm ashamed of its thunder. I would fight my biting, violent nature for you, wrestling the wolves that pace inside my ribs, holding their teeth between my hands until they remember how to rest. For you, I would practice gentleness like a prayer spoken by someone who was never taught to pray. And when I fail— when anger rises like a bruise beneath the skin— I bow my head to the quiet truth of you, ashamed that I am still unfinished, ashamed that the world carved its roughness into me before I ever learned your name. Perhaps that is the illness in me: to long, sometimes, to be broken enough —not knowing that the wish for sickness is already a quiet fever of the soul.