Power

Your (possible, implicit, or projected) fear of my power makes ME fear my power. I'm afraid that your fear might move you to leave me. To think me something strange, unnatural; something unsafe or fearsome. To lash out and destroy me; to burn me and leave my ashes to be carried onward. My power terrifies me, because I'm terrified of your reaction and the lonesome solitude or fearful desecration it might bring.

What I forget is that my power was never on the negotiating table. My power is unarguable. A natural fact no less obvious than a mountain's height or a bird's flight. It can't be taken, nor destroyed. No one can rob me of it. Only I can do that. I can do it by shoving it in the shadows. I could do it by bowing myself at your feet and chaining my forces to your service. I have done it by ignoring my light in hopes that if I don't own it, you won't see it, and the ways it makes me different will remain my forgotten secret. I can hide this brilliance all I want, but it won't make it go away. It will simply wait, indestructible, in all its godly glory - shoved up against nic nack boxes, old sweaters and half finished journals on a dusty shelf.

Flecked with the dust of mundanity my magic remains untarnished. Now my body on the other hand, she remains vulnerable. These dark fears of your smallness resonant most in my woefully breakable bones. Bones whose genes remember what the flick of flames felt like on their skin. Bones whose own instincts remind them of what a caged human can do when cornered. And bones who know the solemn silence of what it is to be left alone and pushed aside. It's the animal in me, the woman in me that fears your smallness. The magician in me sits in restful confidence of the hilt and hue and fullness of my greatness. And she is patiently waiting for me to catch up.