Do I need to be known to be seen?

I wrestle with this thought my ego concocted, my arms aching from the intense hold I’ve had on her. The echoes of longing knocks about from one wall to the next in my small, one bedroom apartment. I hug a stitched pillow: I need to be seen.

But does it actually matter if you don’t know me?

Know the kaleidoscope of a unique past, dynamic present, and hopefully-noble future.

Know the greenery of growth and the redness of pain and the sharp orange and spilled yellows of passion

I once compromised my heart to show this color to another. I handed it over without care or consideration to a man who didn’t know what do with it. He tore at it, teeth sinking in hungrily to a tenderness that I had forgotten. He was greedy, needy, for love and I gave it all too easily.

He couldn’t understand.

I want to speak of resilience. I want to speak of ever-shaping positivity and the way humanity comes back with strength from loss. I want to speak of love that consumes  and music that carries and softness that embodies. I want to speak of healing and movement and the ability to create because, yes, pain is the greatest motivator of art. Other than love. And art deserves a voice and a platform. Art deserves to be seen, yet it’s never fully known.

I sit at a traffic light turned red and peer into the windows of a corner shop, the bright bulbs revealing smiling salespeople. I see the flash of light and laughter in their eyes, the simmer of summer caught in their chests as they dance from one shelf to the next. I see them for a moment. I don’t know them for my lifetime.

Oh, the sweetness of the ego. Sometimes I am able to catch hold of her elbows and gently sway to the rhythm of her curiosity. There’s a simmer of summer there too; I lean in close enough to feel the heat of her sun.

And then sometimes her longing simply echoes in hallowed chest or on iPhone screens or in the quiet hum of a braked car.

Do I need

Do I need

to be known

Do I need to be known

To be seen

To be seen?

I simply

need

to be seen,

if not known.