A Love that Can Hold the Rage

Fragment 391: From Notebooks of The Poet

Scratched into ash-paper and sealed in clay near the Thar-Korr prison fire vents

They told me not to feel.

To stay quiet.

Stay clean.

Stay pleasing.

But there’s nothing clean about survival.

And I’m not the kind of man who will turn away from the filth.

If you come to me with your story,your rape, your silence, your addiction, your shame —I will not look away.

If your hands are stained with blood or trembling with withdrawal,if you’re dripping with drool, grief, or fury, if you don’t yet know if you deserve to be seen — I will still see you.

Because I am you.

And I refuse to be another ghost in your life who flinched when you were real.

I’ve walked through my own infernos.

I’ve swallowed razors in the shape of expectations.

I’ve split my soul to make it through days where my body no longer belonged to me.

I’ve had lovers, strangers, and systems claim pieces of me in exchange for protection.

But even then — even in the burning — I knew this:

I am not here to be clean. I am here to be Love.

Not the gentle, candlelit kind.

The kind that doesn’t blink when it stares into the pit.

The kind that burns through illusion, that rips open silence with song.

And still, I ask myself —What is this Love I speak of?

Some call it soft.

Some call it feminine.

Some call it divine.

But here, in the underbelly of Thar-Korr,

Love has calloused hands and a mouth full of ash.

She spits truth. He breaks locks.

They hold space not just for light, but for all the shadow that built the cage in the first place.

Love is a frequency. A force. A feral pulse in the blood.

Sometimes a whisper, other times a roar.

Sometimes received. Sometimes commanded.

A wave and a blade. A cradle and a war cry.

Most people I’ve met don’t know Love beyond what they lacked.

They’ve been fed fragments, so they chase fragments —Scraps of peace, crumbs of kindness, whispers of worth.

But I’ve stopped asking Love to arrive in a form I can control.

Now, I let it show up in its fullness —Even when it looks like rage.

Because my Love…My Love has teeth.

It is wild and black and holy.

And yes — it rages.

Because it remembers all the times we were silenced.

All the times we were told to stay small, stay quiet, stay appropriate.

Especially us, the ones in bodies they fear.The ones whose rage might just tear a whole lie apart.

So I no longer exile my fire.

If I must burn down illusions to build something real — then so be it.

I am the firestarter.

I am the storm, and I am the sunlight after.

Let this be known:

I will not dim my Love to make the world comfortable.

I will not abandon my rage to make others feel safe.

And I will not twist my heart into a shape that fits a broken mold.

There is power in this heart.

A destructive, liberating, unapologetic power.

I have felt that power distort when unmet —Twist into sexual performance, into conquest, into dominance masked as desire.

But now I see it for what it is — A longing for freedom.

For wholeness.For expression.

For truth.

For Love.

Not the kind you buy.

Not the kind you earn.

The kind that rises like heat from the bones.

The kind that shakes the whole damn system.

So yes, I believe in Love.

The real kind.

The one that holds rage and tenderness in the same breath.

The one that knows the wound and still offers a hand.

I believe in you, even when you're screaming.

Even when you're silent.

Even when you don’t believe in yourself.

Because I’m not just the Poet.

I’m the witness.

The wild heart.

The cracked mirror you finally see yourself in.

And if no one else will hold your storm,

I will.