Regardless

I remember wishing for a boy who'd photograph me for the hell of it

I got one

He went days without speaking to me to punish my nights out alone

He plucked my strings to keep me home

He locked himself in a bathroom, deaf to my protest, when he told me I fucked old friends in bar bathrooms

I lost friends

I remember wishing for a boy as light as the sun

I got one

He yelled at me when I cut myself

We did too much cocaine

I saw my Peter Pan quail at responsibility while he brought me flowers

He kicked the bed til I woke up, he drunkenly read 4-year-old messages

And wanted to know who "this new dude" was

When I left him, he tweaked my tit in a bar while we sobbed

I wanted the boy who left the feeling of home never satisfied in my chest

I got him

He holds me accountable and holds my world in his hands

He is soft and hardness personified when I dissolve

He is protector and protected and critic and patron

He is that which makes me know

I would be fine, thrive without him

But would much prefer

His strong hand in mine

I did not need men to know myself

But I know myself with this man

He is constant reminder

That I am whole

Regardless