The Cost of Creation

I was never in love with you.

My fixation was not with you.

It wasn’t that I romanticized us —

it was intrigue.

I was entranced

by what

you unmasked

in me,

slowly,

then all at once.

The loveliness

in my chaos.

The artistry

in my insanity.

“There is no exquisite beauty

without some strangeness

in the proportion.”

I embraced my distortion

like a kaleidoscope —

fragmented, but beautiful.

Nothing feeds my poetry

like ache and desire,

and you provided both.

You dragged me

to pathetic emotional lows

that burst

into powerful poetic troves.

My creative veins overflowed —

but you wrung out my soul.

The writer in me

is grateful

for the material,

despite the cost.

I am masochistically artistic,

and you —

you are the cure

for my writer’s block.