Many have an image of me. Few get the picture.

A few days ago, I received a notecard from a resident I did not know. At first, I thought this might be an alt from a former partner. Having been on the receiving end of alt attacks, I was leary, and all my former partners, well, that is a whole nother post. Let’s just say, I wouldn’t put it past them. Know what I mean? Reading the notecard, I was intrigued and knew I wanted to do a post on the writing. Now, I didn’t know this resident from Adam. Never had any contact whatsoever. I finished reading the notecard and fired off a response. Later that day, I received a response while online. The person in question assured me he had never met me and didn’t know me from Eve; he had seen my Primfeed and simply needed to know me.

I thanked him for the notecard and asked if I could reprint it with a photo I had in mind. He agreed. So here is the post along with a song. Thank you, “Oncehated.” Strange things happen in Second Life. Smiles

Be kind to one another. Find joy in all you do. Till we meet again♥

YOUR ART

By Oncehated

You have made an art of allowing people to believe they have understood you. The sunlight helps. It finds you laughing, barefoot perhaps, carrying the easy insolence of a woman who knows that strangers will look. You give them enough. A smile. A shoulder turned towards the sea. Some small joke about your body, your temper, the inconvenience of being complicated and almost perfect. They think this is openness. It is not. It is hospitality.

You let them enter the front room of you. It is immaculate there. Everything placed carefully. The day arranged. The ordinary duties completed without applause. You know where everything belongs, even the people, although they rarely understand the labour concealed inside such calm. They see the wife. The woman who remembers. The woman who keeps the machinery turning when others have forgotten there is machinery at all. But you have never wished to be loved merely for being useful. That would be another kind of prison.

So night becomes your correction. A pin is removed. Hair falls. Perfume replaces soap and daylight. Something darker appears beneath the fabric, although perhaps it was always there. The careful woman does not disappear. She simply stops pretending that care has made her harmless. You know what your body can do to a room. More importantly, you know what a room can no longer do to you. Time has not taken your beauty. It has taken your uncertainty. You no longer hurry to be chosen. You look. You measure. You wait to see whether the man before you possesses anything beyond appetite. Desire is common. Attention is rarer. Courage rarer still. You do not want someone who merely says that you are beautiful. Mirrors have done that work already. You want someone who notices the silence after the joke. Someone who understands that “possess me” is not permission given cheaply. It is a locked door, placing the key in a particular hand, then watching closely to see whether that hand trembles. You could surrender. That is not the same as being conquered.

Perhaps this is what they misunderstand most. Your softness is deliberate. Your sensuality is not an accident. Even your longing belongs to you. Saudades… that word you leave almost unattended, as though it escaped while the stronger phrases were watching elsewhere. It tells more than the lingerie does. It says there are absences you still carry. Names that have not entirely left the mouth. Rooms that remain occupied after everyone has gone. You speak of being remembered in love or hatred because indifference is the one death your pride refuses to imagine. You would rather trouble the mind than vanish from it. Better to remain as perfume in an empty corridor, as lipstick upon a glass no one has moved, as the thought that returns when the house is finally quiet.

Yet I do not think you truly want to haunt anyone. You want to be met. Fully. Not as the homemaker without hunger. Not as the seductress without tenderness. Not as the body without the woman directing it. You want someone to turn the mechanism with you. Not behind you. Not while being carried by you. Together. Equal force. Equal intention. A man who understands that keeping you requires neither a cage nor worship, but presence. And perhaps that is your most dangerous quality. Not the curve of you. Not the glance. Not the midnight version wearing lace beneath lamplight.

It is the fact that beneath every performance there remains a woman who knows herself, and still hopes someone else might have the patience to know her too.

*Reprinted with permission