ii want to become her—
to be venus,
to be the air that stirs the sea,
the heat that turns the cold into fire.
i want to be the softest thing in the world,
the kind of love you find in the curl of a petal,
the kind that makes the earth sigh
with relief just to know it exists.
but i am not her,
and it shatters me.

venus is the warmth in the quiet dusk,
the embrace that doesn’t ask,
that doesn’t demand.
she is the pulse of all things tender,
the pulse of what the universe once dreamed
it could be.
but i am a storm,
raging in silence,
a wave that crashes and never recedes.
i am not her;
i am a hunger,
a need that claws at everything it touches,
and turns it to dust before it knows
what it wanted to hold.

how can i be love when i am nothing but
the sharp edge of its absence?
how can i give warmth
when i can barely keep myself from freezing?
i have tried,
tried to soften the jagged pieces of my soul,
but it’s like trying to smooth stones
with hands that tremble and crack.
my love is a fire that doesn’t warm,
it burns.
it scorches the very ground
i wish to walk on.
i want to be her—
the gentle touch,
the quiet grace,
the promise that love is light and pure,
but my love is a shadow
that clings to me like a dark veil,
weighing me down
until i can’t breathe.

venus is the one who turns the night
into something soft,
who makes even the darkness feel like home.
but i,
i am a black hole.
i swallow everything i love,
leaving nothing but the emptiness
of things lost and unspoken.
i wish i could be the pull that draws you near,
but instead,
i am the force that tears things apart
without even meaning to.
i am a wound that never closes,
and the world keeps trying to heal me,
but every touch only opens it wider.

how can i be venus,
the goddess of all things warm,
when my heart is a furnace
that melts what it touches into ash?
how can i be her,
when everything i want to give
turns to stone in my hands?
how can i give love
when i don’t even know
how to hold it without breaking it?

venus is the tender flame
that never flickers,
the light that never leaves you cold.
but i am a flame that is always dying,
flickering in the wind,
fighting the darkness that has wrapped itself
around my bones.
i want to be her,
to be the soft breath of spring,
to be the touch that heals,
but instead, i am a wound,
always aching,
always wanting—
but never enough.

how could i ever be venus
when i am the crater,
the broken piece of a star
that once burned so bright
but now lies still,
a cold shadow of what could have been?
how could i ever be love
when my love is made of ashes
and dust,
a relic of something too fragile
to survive the storms
that rage within me?

i want to be her,
the goddess who walks
without fear of breaking,
the one who loves
without shattering everything in her path.
but i am not her—
i am a fractured thing,
a glass heart
that shatters with the weight of its own need.
and yet,
still,
i wish,
i long,
to be the light that doesn’t burn,
the warmth that doesn’t scorch.
i want to be venus—
but all i am is the wreckage
of something that tried to love
but only learned how to lose.