""It's weird, you know. Meeting all the requirements for living things, but not feeling like it. You tell yourself just breathe, breathe in an out, in and out, until you can do it without reminding yourself. I find it amazing. What makes us human? Genetically, trillions of things, but what makes us separate from all these 'wild animals'? Compassion? Compromise? I haven't seen that in years. At least not in genuine fashion. Those all come at a cost. Everyone wants something in return for it. I think that's what fuels my fire, knowing everything comes at a price."
"Love comes at no cost" she'd say.
"Love comes at the highest cost: there is expected love in return. There, you are expected to keep living, breathing. They want you around, even if you don't want to be there yourself. That's the cost of living and love. Doing more than just existing in this world, even if it's just for others sake.""

I can’t write this poem
I can’t write this poem because the last time I opened up to someone artistically they told me it was pretty dark and I should keep it to myself.

I can’t write this poem
I can’t write this poem because I was raised in a culture that was anti love and pro meaningless ***. I saw endless commercials about movies that glamorize a lifestyle in which your body is fulfilled but your heart is ignored and at that impressionable age I learned my heart came second but my allure came first and the less I cared that happier I would be and I carried that belief around with me the way I used to carry around a Bible as a child.

I can’t write this poem
I can’t write this poem because of the time that I opened my father’s phone to reveal a family secret I would hold to this day against my own moral instincts unraveling miles of insecurities wondering if I’m not a good enough daughter or if he stopped loving my mother or if true love was never real and although I had been taught marriage was my purpose, it was what I believed would make me happy, maybe rings aren’t enough to stay in love and maybe people’s feelings change and maybe no one actually has a “one true love” and that this purpose I had been taught was really an endless wild goose chase that only lead to broken families and lost souls.

I can’t write this poem
I can’t write this poem because sometimes I still wonder why I fell into an abyss of toxicity at such a young age. And when I say wonder I don’t mean a trivial ponder, I mean I contemplate every possible reason why the person who I once believed held the universe in her eyes would lie to my face, why she never kissed me in public and our love was always a secret, why she valued girls with blue hair but my blonde hair was not good enough, why I had to hide bruises from my family when I was still in high school or more importantly, why at the time, I thought I deserved them. These thoughts, this lingering paranoia that I am undeserving of healthy love, they muddy my interpretations of real life and distort reality and effect my relationships. My doctor would call these intrusive thoughts, my best friend would tell me they’re symptoms of PTSD, but I have come to realize that I’ve been burned and I am damaged and I hope to god I can recover.

But you,
Oh god, you
You can write this poem. You can be my safety net while I’m free falling in love. You can be the one to listen to my mental tilt-a-whirls, you can be the one that introduces my body and my heart, you can be the one that calms the storms in my mind when I’m questioning the love I’m deserving of. You are the one who makes sure I fall asleep in my bed after drunk nights, you are the one that still sees my value after acknowledging my flaws.
You can write this poem.

We walk into my bedroom,
continuing the conversation we had in the car.
But, don't you see? she was saying.
We all live forever.
You just have to adjust your definition of forever. I mean, what frame of reference for eternity do we have
other than our own perception?

Really, for all I'm concerned, she sighs,
falling backwards onto the bed,
the universe was born with me.

Isn't that a little bit . . . egocentric? I venture.

Don't be silly. She pulls her hat down over her eyes.
We are all our own universe.

I didn't sleep that night.

redesign yourself.
actually do it, this time.

She's planting out her window box
Young shoots are showing through
She thinks about the Springtime
And the garden she once knew

There were primroses and daffodils
Sweet violets white and blue
She thinks about her husband
And when their love was new

Buds and blooms open up
They scent and colour Summer long
She thinks about those happy days
When they were young and strong

Sunset's falling sooner now
Petals drop, the show is done
She gathers up her Winter shawl
Prepares for what’s to come

Our hands shaped like cages.
Cages shaped in the deformities of our hands.

Stoic fingers as rusty girdles,
Grainy textures as the bare calluses of our hands.

Trap.
Grasshoppers.
Trap.
The Sun.
Trap.
Our lovers hearts.
Within it’s moral confines.

Casually unlearn the truth that
confinement leaves it absent of light,
rid of it’s senescent glow,
dead to grow.

Our hands shaped like cages.
Cages shaped in the deformities of our hands.