Midnight Crowned - Sanctuary

I know where the silence lives. I hear it breathing when you sleep. I could reach into the dark for you. But love is not the taking. There are rooms inside your body where the daylight isn't welcome, little chapels built from moments you survived by disappearing. And I know better than to enter just because you gave me keys. So I wait outside the doorway with my hunger on its knees. You don't owe me resurrection. You don't owe me being whole. I just hate the thought of something still collecting what it stole. Tell me where it hurts without telling me the name. You are not ruined. You are not less. But God... I want to give you rest. LET ME BE THE PLACE YOU DON'T HAVE TO DISAPPEAR. Let me hold the dark without asking it to clear. I will want you without taking. I will burn and let it ache. If loving you means having teeth, then I will learn what not to break. Sometimes mercy looks like patience. Sometimes patience dresses fear. Sometimes calling it acceptance means we leave the suffering here. I would rather damn myself than make your healing serve my thirst. But I cannot call it kindness if your silence only hurts. If you tremble, I will listen. If you stop, then I will stop. If you reach, I'll meet your fingers. If you fall... I won't call it lost. LET ME BE THE PLACE YOU DON'T HAVE TO DISAPPEAR. Let me hold the dark without asking it to clear. I will want you without taking. I will burn and let it ache. If loving you means having teeth, then I will learn what not to break. Love is wonderful. Love is terrible. A second pulse beneath the first. A mouth inside the emptiness. A blessing with a predator's thirst. It hollows me. It fills me. It puts its fever in my blood. And every instinct says... DEVOUR. DEVOUR. DEVOUR. BUT I WOULD RATHER STARVE BESIDE YOU THAN CONFUSE YOUR FEAR FOR LOVE. You are not a locked door. You are not a wound to solve. You are not the thing that happened. YOU ARE NOT WHAT IT TOOK FROM YOU. LET ME BE THE PLACE YOU DON'T HAVE TO DISAPPEAR. Bring me every frightened part you thought I wouldn't want near. I will want you without taking. I will burn and let it burn. There is nothing you must give me. There is nothing you must earn. I have teeth. I have hunger. I have every reason to consume. And I choose you. Again. Again. Again. I MAKE A SANCTUARY OF THE ROOM. Come as close as you can bear. I'll meet you there. No further. I'll meet you there.