tanner x
(For my princess, and all the other littles and subs out there)
Trust me, I know the tightness you feel
when your soul is locked inside society.
Because you are a wild rose, babygirl,
a splash of softness breaking open
the starkness of the world, complicated
with what love really is. The blossom
and thorn. The trust and the pain.
I know when you offer me yourself,
there are whole oceans lapping
at the roots of you. I know
there is no more precious a gift
than the crest of those waters
as you pull towards me.
So sometimes, when I see the play,
the giggle and flash of excitement,
the threat of a tear in your sea deep
eyes, I am even scared—
scared of the weight of the soul
I get to carry, the beauty
of this gift I don’t want to break.
***
Tanner X is a student currently enrolled in Georgia College and State University, working towards an English major. He has had work published in Penultimate Peanut, SHARE, Evocations Review, Unlimited Literature, Porch Critters and The Peacocks Feet, as well as receiving the Academy of American Poets’ Student Poetry Prize for my poem “The Wind Gatherer.”