I trust you to the degree that you have welcomed your own wild out and befriended them.

Have let them run free, growling and foaming and bearing their teeth, not to hurt anyone but for all the reasons that it is their nature and so they must growl.

Have danced her in ways that had your spit fly and your eyes roll and let her bounce and jiggle and sweat and cross her eyes and look unbeautiful and inhabit her from the inside and made no apology.

Have broken down with your feet off the brakes into messy jagged pieces that don’t fit and let him feel the enormity of the mess that is your life and allowed yourself to howl in pain without worrying what the neighbors will think.

Only then will we be safe to love one another.

Because my darling, if you love me, your wild will emerge. I promise you. And if you know them not, you will errantly think it is my fault you feel out of control.

Rather than your own quaking liberation underway.

And it will be a gift to both of us for me to move out of the way of the delirium of you reuniting with your own untamed nature. So that you can have your way with yourself and not try to annihilate me.

I know it can be confusing. I am the passage but not the cause. These are different.

And if you are lucky, you will not shut her down. You will dance and cry and rage senseless until you have welcomed this part home.

And then perhaps we can be friends again.

But make no mistake.

When I love you – when you love me – your wild will rear. This is what allured you to me to begin with.

You will only be able to stay this journey if you love him too.

Photo by Karen Cantú Q on Unsplash