Emily Vance Brown

I do not want to be loved like the sea. I do not want to feel my waves crashing against your shore, to become a predictable, natural menace around which lovers plan their evening picnics. I do not want to be feared like the sailor fears the squall. 

I do not want to be loved like the moon, admired from afar, respected, written about, sung to. Untouchable in my aloofness. Alone in my tragic beauty, a victim to my impenetrable, inevitable fate. I do not want to be worshipped in the night and forgotten with the rise of the sun.

I do not want to be loved like a rose, a fragile, precious thing. I do not want someone to prune my thorns or trim my stem so I fit where they want me. I do not want to be given as a gift, even as a gift of love. I do not want to rot where I am placed. 

Let me try to explain:

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I want to be loved like a stranger. 

One person leaving, one person staying, neither willing to be the first to rise. This is before the trips, of course, before the fights. Before the moving in, moving out. There’s a vulnerability only possible with someone you believe you’ll never see again. It’s the handing of a pocket knife and the asking: will you stab me now, or wait until I’m no longer here to witness it?

I want to be loved like the knife.

I want to be loved like a question that doesn’t need an answer.

I want to be loved like lying on a blanket in the park with an almost-stranger, on a full moon night, in a colder-than-usual frigid Texas March. I want to be loved like the voice that whispers, “tell me more.”

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I want to be loved like bone music.

Behind the wall, black market bootleggers dealt in counterfeits sweeter than drugs. I like to imagine they did it for the love of the sound. For the love of western stars and eastern rebels, and the beauty of refusing to do what we’re told. 

I want to be loved like a gramophone in reverse. 

I want to be loved like an anonymous broken arm singing “Like a Rolling Stone.” 

I want to be loved like dancing to illegal art in a basement apartment with the blackout curtains drawn. I want to be loved like the hope there is always music, there will always be music. 

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I want to be loved like Robert Rauschenberg.

From Texas, like me. Who moved here with only what he could fit in his car, like me. Broke and unemployed, I went to the free friday night at MoMA and I cried in front of Canyon.

I want to be loved like that taxidermied bird. 

I want to be loved like the trash found by Jasper Johns on the side of the road, like the trash that he saw and said to himself, “Let me take this to my lover. Let me take this to my friend. Let me let him transform it.”

I want to be loved by someone who sees me and believes, “She can turn anything into pure art.”