I'm gonna wake up, yes and no

They invented a reason
That's why it stings
They don't think you matter
Because you don't have pretty rings
I keep telling you I don't care
I keep saying there's one thing they can't change

Nights like this, I want to be held, I want to throw things. I want to seek out ludicrous complications, I want to stay home and lock the door. Do something injurious just to prove I can.

Keep myself safe because those I love would ask me to.

Mass of conflicting impulses walking, and it hurts, and I don't even have the words to say why.

I'm your moon
You're my moon
We go round and round
From out here, it's the rest of the world that
Looks so small
Promise me
You will always remember who you are

And it seems, in the early days, there was always a place to go to be ignored. There was always someone to call who would hurt me. There was always somewhere, someone, to circle, to draw in, for play, for pay, who'd send me battered and bleeding from their arms.

But it's not what I want anymore. I've moved past that. I don't crave pain for pain's sake, I never have, and I'm better than that.

...Aren't I?

Let them shuffle the numbers
Watch them come and go
We're the ones who are out here
Out past the edge of what they know
We can only be who we are
It doesn't matter if they don't understand

He says we need to rein back the late nights. I agree. We've been burning too much daylight as it is, and fatigue sinks into my bones. But it always feels like we have so little time, and some nights my heart is in my throat, aching to remain with him.

And I need his warmth, the warmth of his hands, the warmth of his heart, but...something else calls, too. Something I don't want to put into words.

Something I hope will go away, unresolved.

I'm your moon
You're my moon
We go round and round
From out here, it's the rest of the world that looks so small
Promise me
You will always remember
Who you are

He tells me, in the house with round doors, he regrets nothing he's done. He tells me he's sorry anyway. I don't regret, but I can see trouble on the horizon's far edge. What will happen, what might happen, those are territories I no longer choose to walk in. Who needs to borrow trouble that may never come? For now, I know I like being in his arms. I know I like talking to him. Isn't that enough?

But I see potential complication if we keep moving down this path, potential impact on all my other relationships, and I can't juggle hearts anymore, if I ever could.

Who you were
Long before
They said you weren't
Anymore



He stares at me and wonders. I can see it on his face. And it's not that I've been dishonest, it's not that I've misled, but...I haven't mentioned every single thing. I've told him as much as I can, as much as I have words for, and I will, I want to, be the woman that can speak of such things without flailing for description, or throat knotting closed.

And then nights like this come, and the screams I want to have excuse to use swell behind my throat, and I will not, I will not ask him to do this for me. It's the one thing I agreed never to ask.

And I won't, I don't, want it. Pain, brutality, disregard...these are not the tools of my current trade, they're not motifs of my life as currently lived.

I don't need this. I don't.

Sad excuse for a sunrise
It's so cold out here
Ice and silence and dark skies
As we go round another year
Let them think what they like, we're fine
I will always be right here next to you

He says I sink down into submission too easily. He says he never realized before, he says it's dangerous. He says he must remember, he must be careful, what he does, when I'm breathing and unstrung.

But I only give in that completely with him. Nearly everyone else I fight, on some level. Even if it's just fighting myself to remain in the passion play, to take what comes, not to press, not to demand, not to ask for more. That constant iteration of the rules behind my lips...for otherwise, I'd forget, I know this.

I'm your moon
You're my moon
We go round and round
From out here, it's the rest of the world that looks so small
Promise me
You will always remember who you are...



He touches the heart at my throat and smiles softly. A metal heart, he remarks, and I smile. He doesn't know what it means, so I tell him--that the doll needed a heart to live, that I'd never had a non-organic form before, and that it was made for me, crafted for my use, to be my life in that form--and in others.

He nods, understanding, or at least, understanding what I've told him. And inside the battle rages, between safety and danger, between protection and exposure. The need to be loved.

The need to be hurt.

I retreat, it's safer, it's better than words which can turn or twist, especially in my mouth. I retreat, and breathe in safer spaces, and tell myself it will pass, it always does. It will pass and I will not need to do anything.

It will go away and I'll be free of it once more.

Until the next time. Maybe the next time I'll understand more....but in the meantime, it's the one thing I don't ask him for. The one thing I'll never ask him for, the never that stands between us but doesn't hold us apart.

Because that never? Keeps me safe. How can I possibly begrudge that?

(Save that these nights...these long, dark nights...something in me does. But that grasping, trembling part...that will leave, too. Given time. In the meantime, a space of not talking about other things that happen? Just in case...should be fine. I can tell my loves later, when it's quieter inside. Tell them later of agreements and potential and change, because it would be premature indeed to tell them now, nothing's been agreed...

(And mayhap nothing will be.)

In the meantime, I breathe myself to sleep and tell myself for the next few days...I won't ask. Because it will pass, this jittery sensation. It always has. It always does.

The problem is...it always comes back...

(Song is Jonathan Coulton's "I'm Your Moon". And no, if you were curious? This doesn't all refer to one person.)