Love is Tender

Like a master butcher you trimmed me down,

Reduced me from the wholesale piece,

Sectioned me and discarded the top cuts indiscriminately,

You devoured the tenderloin and left me spineless.

An insidious act of betrayal,

Was it? Is it a blatant disregard for me?

You have been cutting away chunks of me seemingly before my very eyes.

I didn’t realize I was bleeding out,

Until you reduced me to the bare minimum.

Like a skirt steak I wasn’t very appealing.

I couldn’t connect with my reflection.

Who I had become was unrecognizable,

The skeletal remains of me pulsing with madness.

An empty vessel tarnished and chipped.

Still sharpening your knives,

You continue to slice and take every last morsel of me,

But I found nourishment outside of your realm.

To not recognize oneself to the point of despair,

To be overwhelmed by an unbearable ache in your soul,

A darkness that paralyzes everything you do and think,

That is the moment at which one admits defeat and yields,

Or the moment that one sees a spark, hears a whisper in the wind,

And is compelled to fight to be whole again.

You can take off your apron now and launder it for the next one.

Your work with me is done,

And unbeknownst to you I am done with you,

With patience and serenity, I have healed and nourished my power reserve,

I am all Ribeye steak, reinforced and wrapped in layers of tenderloin,

And I will never render myself to be slaughtered by anyone again.