Warning Label

I warn them about the chaos and the turbulence. I tell them about the emotions and the past. I recount all of the ways I embody a soul too difficult to handle.

I am open about my inability to feel less and my lack of evasive mystery. I open up my chest and dissect each ventricle of my heart with bare hands even showing them how I restitch the seams that often burst open due to a capacity being breached.

Like show and tell, I explain that it’s content has never been discovered in any other human. I look in their eyes and I tell them how they make me feel, unafraid of their answer.

I give them the insight of my aura by stating that I am a too-much-woman and I recount how many left due to such. I display my unapologetically exhausted soul’s passion—an intensity I’ve never received but refuse to alter despite of such.

I, without script, explain why every inch of my enthusiastic love is not temporary and welcomed to the home of my heart after too many years of wishing I could rid them of their visits.

I remind them I’ll never change, that I owe it to my persistent endurance and undying loyalty to ever silence who my Me really is.

Although, I must admit, there is just one thing I never mention—the one thing that ends up being hardest for them to handle after all: their regret of leaving me.

Gemnah Maley Bray