Here in between gasps:
My family, as I call them, rushes to provide answers, to sprawl truths before me like cards, turning them over one by one. I release the queen of hearts, worried my grip may have torn the edges. The best cards mark my future, an immediate future that calls to mind another place and time in which I was freely and savagely myself. Pretend this is what’s necessary, pretend I truly do adore the emancipation, the breath and space. I play all night long, hugging old friends tightly. Flirting with girls, small kisses, the wondering at what. At the end of the night, I fall asleep bathed in tears and moonlight, infinitely alone. The realization that I have wrung you out, the understanding that I am irrevocably damaged.

Persist to change.

But this: two crazy beings sliding into each other, complete and whole, more than the sum of their parts.
This: your eyes, luminous, an inch from my own, my hand grazing the side of your face.
And this: the brilliant tingle of your laughter, the warmth and the shudder.
That.