On a chilly December Christmas Eve, my padded feet and rough-hewn toes walked to the end of the ship of my life. I clutched the heart of the ocean necklace, holding it closely. Throwing caution to the wind, y et again, I threw our love overboard. Hurling it over the end of the rail.  I watched it as it fell, sinking down deep—beyond where I could see, floating onward. I knew you couldn’t ever possibly love me the way I could love you, not here and now. Your voice is rich and deep, but I can feel the shallow depths around the perimeter of the things you say. I wish I could believe you, but I know that they are empty promises. If he wanted to, he would. If you loved me, if you wanted to dance, if you really meant any of it, you would be standing here before me, vis a vis. You remind me of my younger self, looking for any reason to run. Well run, Forest, run. I don’t care anymore. Go off and find your way, find your way back to her, to someone else, to anywhere. Find a dark-haired beauty on one of your international flights. But the girl in my twenties that you could easily impress isn’t the woman I am today. I deserve the world, and unless or until you can give it to me, I am not here to entertain your loneliness or stroke your ego. I am a woman of God. I have a fire that burns in me that can be seen from miles away. There is not another like me, on this earth or the next to come. I am wholly devoted. A healthy dose of confidence and a sprinkle of delusion, but someone anyone would want to bring home to Mama. Return to sender, I’m not available for your empty words and backless promises. I want something real. I want everything. I want the moon. And if you can’t tie a knot and lasso it down for me, you can stay in your corner of the world. You can take flights, sit next to pretty strangers and find love under covers or bury it all in Jack or Jim or Coors Light, but I am off grid. I am a hologram, an orb, an itch you cannot scratch, an unfinished story, a paragraph without punctuation. I’m a beginning you never got to end. And I sleep like shit, but I sleep like a baby and it’s all good, and If one day I open the door and you’re standing there, maybe we can re-negotiate. Until then, let me be whatever you want me to be in your mind. Keep your narratives, tuck them in to bed with you. Whatever helps you sleep at night. Whatever you have to tell yourself about me, so you can write me off. You don’t even know me at all. And you probably never will.

If he wanted to he would, but he never did. And we ran out of time, and I closed the door. Cinderella dropped her glass slipper but decided to leave it in her hometown. She walked barefoot into the sunset, knowing she didn’t need saving because she had her Savior.