Thorns

A poem about longing and the painful paradox of reaching for what we desire.

Using the image of a rose protected by thorns, this piece explores the ways beauty, intimacy, hope, and longing often become entangled with fear, protection, and suffering.

Sometimes the pain comes from what stands in the way.

Sometimes it comes from continuing to reach.

Longing has always felt complicated to me.

At times it feels beautiful—alive with possibility, anticipation, and the sense that something meaningful exists just beyond where I currently stand.

At other times it becomes painful. The more intensely something is desired, the more visible the distance becomes.

What interests me about this poem now is that the flower never actually harms the speaker.

The thorns do.

And even the thorns are not malicious—they exist to protect something delicate. That realization shifted something for me:

Often what keeps us from what we most deeply want is not rejection or impossibility.

It is protection.

Our own. Someone else's. Or both.