Truffle Boundaries
My boundaries are not fences.
They are truffles—
rare, expensive, difficult to access
without the patience to search properly.
And yet, people arrive with bargain-bin entitlement,
expecting sacred access
with clearance-rack behavior.
How fascinating.
Some become offended
when they realize I am not endlessly available,
not emotionally self-checkout,
not a twenty-four-hour convenience store
for underdeveloped communication skills
and inconsistent affection.
But darling, discernment is not cruelty.
It is maturity in silk gloves.
I have learned that access
is the most expensive thing a woman can give.
More expensive than beauty.
More expensive than desired.
Certainly more expensive than potential.
Attention is common.
Presence is rare.
I no longer confuse being wanted
with being valued.
Those are two very different currencies.
The older I become,
the more I understand decadence—
not as excess,
but as refinement.
A truffle does not apologize
for growing beneath the surface.
It does not bloom for everybody.
It requires depth.
It requires patience.
It requires someone willing
to kneel to the earth
instead of stomping across it.
And perhaps that is what boundaries truly are:
an elegant refusal
to be consumed casually.
I say no with warmth now.
With poise.
With moisturized certainty.
No longer explaining myself
into exhaustion
for people committed to misunderstanding me recreationally.
There is freedom in this.
And humor, too.
Because the same people
who once called you “too much.”
will later complain
They cannot find anyone with substance.
Of course, they can’t.
They kept choosing glitter
over gold.
Noise over nourishment.
Cheap sugar over the slow, intoxicating richness
of something real.
But I have become deeply uninterested
in shrinking into digestibility.
I would rather be acquired slowly.
Understood carefully.
Loved deliberately.
Like truffles.
Like sacred things.
Like women who finally learned
that boundaries are not walls.
They are proof
that the soul knows its own value.
Sherley
