A Vow to Devotion

A Vow to Myself, My Future Lovers, and Life Itself

I. INVOCATION

I’ve never hungered for a bond that stands at the threshold, holding a bouquet of easy answers.

Bring me the kind that drags its story behind it like a rusted blade,

the kind that says, “I’ve been to the pit and back, and I have not come empty-handed.”

I long for a union that does not ask me to soften the jagged edges of my past,

nor wrap my ghosts in silk so they don’t frighten the guests.

I long for the one who will sit with me in the graveyard of my old selves,

kneeling beside every version I buried and murdered just to keep breathing,

tracing the names I’ve scratched onto headstones in the dark.

Bring me the one who looks at the blood under my nails and says,

“Show me where it hurt. Show me what you had to kill inside yourself.

I do not flinch. I do not run. I will bury it with you, or dig it up if that’s what your soul craves tonight.”

Let them keep their clean, bright lovers, all honeyed smiles and pretty lies.

Give me the one who smells like rain and rust,

who holds my face like a prayer and my rage like an inheritance.

The one who carries the wild thing in his eyes and the monk in his marrow.

The one who knows the sacred lives right beside the profane,

and that the holy has teeth.

II. THE WITNESS

I long for a staying that tastes of confession, sweat, salt,

a bond that sits up with me through the storm,

watches the ceiling crack under lightning’s tongue,

and says, “This is what it means to stay.”

Bring me the kind of vow that does not shrink when the ache arrives unannounced,

that does not vanish when my softness snarls, or my darkness rattles the doorframe.

May my heart never settle for a presence that performs staying,

I long for the one who embodies it.

Let my sanctuary read like Kafka’s pages, inked in ruin, trembling with myth, unafraid of its own appetite.

Let it think like Jung’s mind, all labyrinth and lantern, archetype and shadow stitched into the same skin.

Let it ache like Dostoevsky’s confessions, a mouthful of God and dirt, one never cancelling the other out.

Let it echo like Plath’s confessions, Brontë’s moors, Austen’s sharp, quiet rebellions, Tolstoy’s vast moral hunger, and Stoker’s immortal dark,

a lineage that teaches me the storm and the sanctuary are never far apart.

Bring me the one who does not fear what lives inside my bones,

the one who stands barefoot in the cathedral of my grief,

who lights a candle instead of tearing the walls down.

Who does not hang prayers from my ribs like trophies,

but places his palm there and listens for what still wants to be forgiven.

III. ANCESTRAL BLOOD

I have walked corridors stained with blood that did not belong to me,

but whose echo I will carry until my last breath.

I have held my own body like a fortress at the threshold of unspeakable violence,

shielded innocent eyes from ruin so they would not bear the sight that lives behind mine.

I have knelt in the aftermath, alone, stitching my own mind back together

while the world named me survivor but did not want the story that made me so.

I fled to foreign waters, drank the milk of other gods,

because the prison of my own memory was too small for my terror to breathe.

I have tasted violence and vowed it would not make a home in my mouth.

I have learned to make sanctuary of what should have devoured me.

I long for a man who respects the shackles I’ve had on my wrists since birth,

the chains I learned to decorate like bangles so the world wouldn’t hear me rattle.

One who honors the starvation and suffering I once endured,

the pain I swam through alone while clearing the way for others to see the shore.

One who does not pity my survival, but bows to it,

and knows it has shaped the garden where my faithfulness now grows.

IV. THE KEEPER

He understands that this consecration is not a performance.

It is the vow you make when you realize you are standing in the ruins of someone else’s becoming,

and you choose to stay anyway.

I ask for this only because I too have stood in that ruin alone.

I have crawled through the graveyard of my own forgetting,

held my shadows by the throat and by the hand.

I have sat with the parts of me I longed to abandon,

and learned to offer them bread instead of exile,

a seat at my table when the world would have left them starving.

I have kissed the shackles I was born wearing and turned them into relics of survival,

a testament that I do not run from my history, I reforge it.

I do not beg for what I do not already give.

I am the keeper of my own dark country,

the one who lights the lantern when the wolves come close,

the one who stands barefoot in her own cathedral of grief,

tending the candles when no one else comes.

I have chosen myself in the pit, in the grave, in the bloom,

and so I will accept nothing less than what I offer myself:

a staying that does not flinch,

a bond that does not vanish when the ghosts arrive.

I am the first witness.

You will not be my only one, but you must be worthy of the seat beside me.

V. THE VOW

May my heart never settle for a staying that asks for anything less than my truth,

and offers nothing but its own.

A vow that says: “Show me what you’ve stitched shut.

I will not rip it open. I will lay beside it until it trusts the light again.”

Bring me the one who will not flip the script or set the house on fire when my truth reveals his reflection.

Who will not call my knowing blasphemy or my trembling hysteria.

Where my freedom is welcomed, not caged, revered, not contained.

Where my pain is not a threat to be silenced, but a truth to be witnessed.

When my mind flickers like a lightning bolt in my chest,

when memory pulls me under like an undertow I cannot name,

may he anchor me gently.

May he be my eyes when I cannot see,

my hands when I can’t find the edges of the world.

May he never use my shadows as a maze to trap me.

May he hold my softest terror with holy regard, not domination.

I hunger for the bond that loves like a prayer, unhurried, reverent, dripping candlewax onto our shadows so they glow while we do.

The kind that doesn’t mistake my faithfulness for docility,

that knows my softness is a blade honed on bone, I choose not to use it, but could.

May he not reach for me with dirty hands that do not know their own filth.

May he not offer me a mirror only to crack it when it shows him his own mask.

May he stand with me when my voice goes quiet,

and touch my throat and say, “Speak. I can hold the words you’re afraid of.”

VI. BENEDICTION

May this vow know grief and desire drink from the same well.

May rage and tenderness stay twin rivers feeding the same dark garden.

May I never clip my thorns to be worthy of being touched,

but find a hand that understands how to bleed without blaming the rose.

May this staying remember I am not a feast for the starved,

nor an altar for the unworthy to bow at and pretend they believe.

I am the temple. I am the flame. I am the holy ruin you keep returning to because it refuses to stay buried.

So may my sanctuary taste of dark honey and grave soil.

May it shatter what is false and crown what is true.

May it leave the performance rotting at the threshold,

and bow only to the trembling myth that lives beneath.

May it stand beside me when I am too tired to hold my own softness.

May it press its mouth to my scars and say, “Not all wounds want to be healed. Some only want to be seen.”

May it bow in my wreckage, where ghosts come home to feed, and find a garden there.

May it know that every version of me, the ones alive, the ones buried, the ones clawing their way back from the grave,

deserves to be touched without fear.

Let the ones who stand with me come armed with nothing but their own rawness.

Let them leave their masks in the dirt with the bones of who they thought they had to be.

To stand in my cathedral is to be undone.

And to be undone here is not a death.

It is the truest devotion I know.

VII. THE RITUAL

To speak a vow is to make a covenant with yourself. A ritual does not have to be elaborate. It has to be intentional.

Materials

• A black candle (for shadow and devotion)
• A bowl of water or wine (for memory and grief)
• A small stone, piece of bone, or relic that feels like survival in your hand (for endurance)
• Paper and ink (for your vow)

Steps

1. Light the candle. Say aloud: “I call forward the shadows I have carried. Tonight, they are witnesses, not jailers.”
2. Place your hands over the bowl. Whisper into the water or wine one illusion or deception you are ready to release. Dip your fingers in and anoint your throat, so your voice is blessed to speak truth.
3. Hold the stone or relic in your palm. Say: “I have survived. My survival is sacred. I carry it with me into devotion.”
4. Speak aloud one line from this vow that resonates most deeply with you. Let the words move through your body, not just your mouth.
5. On the paper, begin writing your own vow…even if it is only one sentence. Place it under the candle until the ritual ends.

When the candle burns low, close with:

“May I never settle for a vow that asks for less than truth. May devotion begin with me.”

VIII. YOUR OWN VOW

Here are questions to guide you in shaping your vow:

• What have I survived that must be honored, not hidden?
• Which illusions or deceptions do I keep mistaking for love or safety?
• What does staying mean to me, and what performances of staying will I no longer accept?
• What parts of my shadow must be given a seat at the table, rather than exiled?
• If devotion is a prayer, what do I most hunger for it to sound and feel like in my life?
• What is the vow I will not betray, even when I am alone?

Write your answers not as explanations but as declarations.