Love Without Influence

<p><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>Influence (noun): A power affecting a person thing or course of events.</em></p><p></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>Monty</strong></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>Boy meets Girl.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>Boy experiences severe intestinal distress and runs away.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>Boy returns and falls in love with Girl despite his... difficulties.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>Then Boy's entire world explodes shattered by outside influences that would have broken a weaker man.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>But not me. I took all the pain... the hurt... the betrayal... and became stronger. Harder. My heart is an inanimate stone in my chest now and that's exactly how I prefer it.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>When I'm called back to New York due to circumstances out of my control I run into her. My only love.</span></p><p><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>Kassie Ramirez.</em></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>But I can't have her and she wouldn't want me anyway.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>I'm not the nice sensitive boy she once knew. I'm a complicated man with dark needs the kind sweet Kassie would never accept.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)> </span></p><p><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>Kassie</strong></p><p><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>Bend so you won't break.</em></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>That was my motto for years and it served me well. It helped me survive when one man broke my heart and another tried to break my spirit. But not anymore.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>Now I bend for no one.</span></p><p><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>Then Monty Bouvier returned.</em></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>If he thinks he can waltz back into my life like nothing ever happened he's got another thing coming.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>I'm no longer the shy little Kasserole he knew back then.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>But when our past hurts are brought to light we discover that our lives were manipulated by those around us all those years ago.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(81 88 86 1)>And I'm prepared to tell all those influences to go straight to hell.</span></p><p></p>