You have to spend enough time alone
to learn the difference between
choosing someone and needing them
to save you. I thought I had learned it well
perhaps too well.

Over time, I became everything I knew how to ask for.
I carried my own weight for so long that the thought
of another pair of hands began to feel unnecessary.

Still, somewhere beneath that certainty, there was a cut
as thin as paper against skin.

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art: Ed Perkins