Poets do not just want love, they want a brave witness.
I’ve recreated shame when having sex with my best friends.
Shame from rejection. Shame in pleasure. All beautifully disguised as being loved.
The love of a friend.
I’ve died twice, perhaps even more at the cost of this.
I didn’t know I was mourning myself
Innocence lost.
The relationship will never be the same.
I will never be the same.
I wonder what I’ve gained from this.
What parts of them do they feel I’ve robbed
Or simply that they have gotten lost in the translation
Swept away along with my presence-
Down the current of memories repressed.
This is my perversion. Feeling obligated. Wanting to give.
Conceiving, bearing lies
These birthing pains come with complications
The want to satisfy with the hope of feeling satiated.
I am not.
I convince myself of satiation knowing that there is the presence of absence between us.
Something is missing.
I don't know who left first.
Or who even arrived at all?
If you show up to a party and no one is there, was there ever a party?
If you show up to a party but no one is really present, were you ever really there?
I tell myself it will not happen again.
I have to catch myself and remain held
I can only unravel for myself
To myself
For my vulnerabilities are not for everyone
And I feel vulnerable far too often.
Exhale
Release
These are to be done in private
In person, you have no idea who I am
And to believe that you love me is comical
The journey leads me back to myself
But we have gone nowhere
If I have not unraveled before you, you could never love me.
And If I have, and I am met with what I fear, then you were merely a bystander and not the honorable recipient of my falling webs.
I am open, but I cannot take another seriously
Not when they declare their love for me.
I do not want a passive love
Idealistic
Up for interpretation
I want the truth.
I want to be peeled raw, and you partake in my flesh with reverence.
For I surely will delight in yours.
I want more.
I deserve better.
And I will not let this happen to me again.
My boundaries are my own.
And I have to protect myself.
Why put myself in places where there is room to overanalyze and criticize when I could put myself in places where I know I can flow
Where i know I can be held.
And that place, for now, is just with myself.
I accept that.
Poets do not just want love, they want a brave witness.
I think about the spirits that occupy that space between one another.
How has this possession brought us together?
How will it tear us apart?