I was infatuated with his introversion. The way he spoke in written word, each thought trickling down his arm onto paper; the way he expressed his thoughts; the way he processed his inner being. As his mind touched mine, I was swayed by the cosmos within him.
But his soul never reached past his skin. His bones walled him in, locking his soul deep within him. He created words but wasn’t created by them. His ego on display nothing but a hollow image to pacify the external world.
He was broken in a way I could not heal – he was broken in a way I could not reach – because his soul could not connect to mine.
And so I sat in cafes on the water’s edge, looking out the window at the endless, empty beauty, my soul fading within me as no one could speak to her. She was worn by solo responsibility, by holding up a heavy world with thin threads, by an ego that pretended to be exotic. She was a soul built to play with the cosmos, but weighed down by temporal expectations.
And as the water reflected in the window, there passed by a second silhouette – a man made of extroversion. His colors drew me to him. He did not possess any paper nor ink, but instead, lived his words as he spoke them.
And in his presence, the weight of my soul lifted, and she found herself smiling once more; his soul on his skin putting my mind at ease.
And I fell for his extroversion not because he was a man less broken, but because his broken soul could dance with mine.
His extroversion drew my soul out of my skin. His soul connected to mine in ways the mind never could. And while the cosmos within him remained a mystery, the universe orbited around his colors, encouraging my soul to dance again.
When his soul danced with mine, she was no longer locked behind my bones – locked within my own introversion, trapped in a world I could only put on paper – but instead, she was on display for the world to see; my ego dissolved in his colors.
Deidrea DeWitt
11.18.23