You Hold All the Space
special, they tell me
fall so fast
gone, their sight
on me they grasp
paw and cling,
won’t change a thing
you and
you and you
you bring
what follows you becomes enough
darkness now
my candle snuffed
This is about my lifelong struggle to balance my need to be useful with my desire for belonging. My utility came from offering my partners a chance to be themselves, to be both held and free. My desire for belonging led me to partnerships with those who were unable to reciprocate, who believed they could fix me, who misunderstood me. In these relationships, I became smaller, quieter, and lonelier over time.
This is about the agony of love and life in the midst of imbalance, about the exhaustion of a lifetime of protecting myself, not due to fear, but to keep from being consumed.
Insider’s Look examines the inspiration for poems written in my Bleed with Me series. I wrote these poems during a period of transformation. It was the first phase of breaking free from the chains that bound me – career, a marriage that was no longer a partnership, a loose definition of my role as a mother, and a past that still haunted me.
Quinn Steele 