What is a poem?
A lilting of words?
An image of voices
forever unheard?
What's this picture of symbols
all ordered in lines?
What's this rare combination?
Did it take her much time?
What makes the pattern
or rhyme start to flow?
What sets it apart
from the prose or the scroll?
Is it empathy recalling
some rose-tinted dream?
Maybe it's laced in darkness
the vile or obscene?
What is a poem?
Some words written with tone?
What are these lyrics
Sung straight from my bones?

I love with my fingertips
on your cheek bone
And my lips whispering
on your shoulder
You
with a blunt in your grasp
And a fist ready to run
A blistering rage set on full
And a kiss
with the sharpest tongue
I'd ask you to be gentler
But that would be too much
I'm lucky to be in your thoughts
And crushed
beneath your touch
We all love a little differently
But that does not make me weak
When you have all the words
And I can barely
*speak

this is for every conversation where I hesitated
and each instant I second-guessed myself
for all the moments that should have been
and every "what if" that I've over-thought
I've lost so many opportunities
from choosing to say nothing one too many times,
and what I meant hid behind closed lips
so instead my silence spoke too loud
but hopefully you're listening now
and these unspoken truths will finally be heard
so this language between us of misunderstandings
might finally be able to be put into words

I cried myself an ocean and set sail on the rocky seas only to become shipwrecked on an island of all my broken dreams


B.S.