Hear me. Read Me. Feel me...

Sovereignty bled through the edges of self-abandonment.

It did not show up like thunder and lightning, with a crown on its head, with bass in its voice and back straight.

It bled.

It trickled in.

It smeared the vision I had of myself, like finger paint dipped in crimson.

It anointed my brow with an awareness that screamed from the abyss of my chest.

Sovereignty wasn't gentle. It did not caretake. It did not shrink. It did not bend backwards at the behest of another.

Nor did it bludgeon. It arrived. Like violence.

The violence was psychic. It was psychological. It was mental.

Pain that had me doubled over, curling around a void, a black hole shouting sentences that choked me with outstretched palms reaching for patterns that left imprints on my soul.

The need to leave myself in order to find belonging in the breath that another breathes.

As they confide in me, making of me a container for others' angst.

I shapeshift to be what is needed, and yet. the shape I never seemed to take was myself.

Sovereignty crawled on the floor of the bathtub, drenched in anxiety.

What is another word for scream? Face contorted in the sheer force. Having roots ripped out.

Sovereignty has shown no mercy. It demanded everything.

There was no half measure. There was no almost.

Every ounce was siphoned.

Every attachment broken.

Bleeding. Rivers of generational pain. Servitude and solitude.

Sovereignty was like steel. Revealing itself when everything else collapsed.

Sovereignty remained. After the wailing, the flailing, the grasping, steal stayed.

Creating a container for the disillusionment, for the dissolvement of everything that wasn't it.

Grief grew.

Self-abandonment was no longer an option, a way of life that was no longer viable.

All of this was a choice, a choice to endure the deconstruction of what was.

So, that what could be, can live.