Beyond Lines: Empire

By

 Literature) 

Sacrifice. Time is sacrifice. Action is sacrifice. Love is sacrifice. Where does it stop? At relocation? Cold friendship? A loss of self? How much sacrifice is enough to secure your place in their life? What else do you have to lose? A question with an answer, but never the right one. It's not a matter of what you sacrifice. It's whether or not that sacrifice is worth it. 

To light the altar of your every aspiration ablaze and call it "love" is vain. This is but the romanticized pain we inflict upon ourselves just to prove our feelings are real. But the truth is that an empire built on oblation, an offering to the gods of our sentimentalism, is an empire that burns all the same.

Empire:

I'll trade my heart for an empire

just to see it burn.

From so far, you painted me a liar.

I guess I never learned.


I let my guard down to pretty serpents

with lying eyes and venomous lips.

They hide like scars and hang from my neck

like a necklace laced with poison.


I made a castle with the pieces of us.

My crown of sorrow in a bed of dust.

In silence I reign in a palace of pain

and the heart I shattered was broken in vain.


I'll trade my heart for an empire

just to see it burn.

From so far, you painted me a liar.

I guess I never learned.


I'll keep the ashes of our star-crossed banner.

The Roman Empire was built to die alone.

We were built to die alone.


All of me)

"Totum meum pro vobis-" Latin for "All of me for all of you." Phrased differently, realistically, it might read "All I could be for all that you are." Individuality is among the many complexities of this life. The definition of a person differs from thought to belief to thesis. A biologist might say we are oxygen and carbon and hydrogen whereas a psychologist might say we are our environmentally induced behavior. An evangelical might say we are God's creation in perfect image. But a SBNR (spiritual but not religious) person might say true personhood is the friends you make along the way. Whether you view individuality through a political, holistic, tinted, or mindful lens, this much is true—at the center of personhood is the potential to be more. 


All of you) 

To give that away, sacrifice the potential to be, isn't love at all. Love doesn't consume, even as it burns. It breathes, it allows, it grows. If I feel suffocated by what I put into a relationship, that relationship is direful. Yes, love requires action, but action does not denote a sense of enervation. Relationship is not the absence of autonomy, but a place where autonomy is celebrated and nurtured. 


All of us) 

So then, if I put myself first, do I inadvertently put you last? Is it partial to think that I can love you and love myself? When it becomes an ultimatum between my autonomy and my relationship, I have to choose my autonomy. After all, all empires fall. Why should I fall with it?


Finality) 

My soul speaks an olden language, misunderstood by many. Make no mistake, this song may have been written for another, but my words are for you. You were never going to know me, and I don't owe you emotional labor. I want love but not at the expense of my independence. 

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