Call Me Difficult Then

People call it difficult
when you refuse to live on scraps.

They say it about love first, usually.
Then books.
Then music.
Then the way I make a room.
The way I garden.
The way I notice when something
has no pulse.

They say I want too much,
but I have never understood the virtue
of wanting something just enough
to tolerate it.

There are people
who can sip from life politely.

A little affection.
A little beauty.
A little song in the background.
A little color on the wall.
A little dream, sanded down
until it fits inside
a reasonable sentence.

I am not one of them.

I have tried to be.

I have sat inside the gray middle
and called it maturity.
I have mistaken numbness for peace.
I have made myself smaller
so other people could call the room calm.

I have accepted almost-love,
almost-joy,
almost-art,
almost-truth,

and wondered why I felt hungry
with something still in my hands.

But I know myself now.

I do not want a life
that simply does not hurt.

I want one that answers back.

I want books that leave fingerprints.
Music that opens a locked door
somewhere in my ribs.
Rooms that look like somebody
meant every inch of them.
Gardens that do more than grow.
Love that does not ask me
to abandon myself
just to be easier to hold.

And no, that does not mean
I am chasing chaos.

I know the difference
between fire and destruction.

I have been both.

I know what it means
to burn the field down
because I had nowhere else
to put the heat.

And I know what it means now
to take that same fire,
kneel in the dirt,
and grow something from it.

So when people tell me
to accept the small safe thing,
the harmless thing,
the practical thing,
the thing that almost fits,

I hear what they are really saying:

Be easier.
Need less.
Call it enough
before anyone has to feel inadequate.

But I am done building a life
out of things
I had to convince myself to want.

Let other people keep the middle
if it keeps them warm.

I know my own terms.

I am empty,
or I am overflowing.

I am silent,
or I am singing through the walls.

I am alone,
or I am met fully.

I am resting,
or I am making something
with every living part of me.

Maybe that sounds unreasonable.

Maybe it is.

But every beautiful thing
I have ever made
came from the part of me
that refused to be reasonable
about being alive.