Mar 2014
For goodness sakes, put a bigger smile on your face.
You look like you’re trying, and I’m not buying it.
I use to lament the miles that separate us, but now i rejoice in the distance.
Stay over there, and I’ll be here.
I’ll live in the light, and fight fight fight back the memories of your hands on my body.
I’ll push away all the butterflies, and sweep them into the corner where they can decompose and slowly fade away.
I’ll let my insides, layer by layer, forget your voice. Forget your laugh. Forget even the way you move.
Because now, it’s her turn.
Now she gets to discover, each flaw, each tear in your integrity and character.
You’ll play the part, and act like it’s not hard for you to be okay with yourself.
Will she know as much as I do? Will she explore the places I had been before, and came to love more and more?
Will she get to whisper words we once shared under the summer stars and grassy fields?
Will you sing her songs by the shores and sunsets, while she sings along, better than my voice could muster.
Because I wonder.
I wonder if this will really last. I wonder if it’s just a cover, because God knows I’m not over-
Alright, you got me. I almost said it.
But I have to remember that your way of believing is a way of deceiving those you love into thinking you accept them, when really they are less than.
I look at the faces we grew to know together, I listen to the hearts of the ones who differ.
I can’t, you said.
With a stern mouth and fake face plastered on the man I once loved is now a little boy running scared for the corn fields.
You hide behind home baked pies and lies of an American Dream, an archaic stream, slowly drying up in a drought of reality. Of God calling us to look forward. Let’s walk through the desert. Let’s stumble through nothingness until you find it’s there that God speaks.
God speaks not to gender, not to race, not to attraction. God speaks to our bodies, God speaks to our communities, God speaks through our hearts.
Do not shame yourself for loving yourself. Do not tell me that I’ll shine brighter on my own. Do not tell me how to be, because I thought we were a team.
Secret glances and awkward run ins left me in the cold while you’re warm in the frosted lands. Stuck in the middle of worlds moving forward, caught in the eye of the storm where everything is the norm.
But the storm is coming. It’s gunning you down. I pray it hits you hard and knocks the doe eyed look out of your sockets. I hope it stirs the fire that once burned brighter, and I hope you find all the answers. I hope you know that life isn’t in one place. It’s the wind, blowing through trees, making the leaves sing. It’s the endless rhythm of the ocean caressing shores, and checking on it’s lovers. It’s the sound of still waters on a sunday afternoon.
Pull the grace from your face, and see that others need your help. Pull your head out from behind your own ambition and ammunition, and see that what we hold is not a weapon, but an endless procession of hurt and misrepresentation.
You see, there’s a book we would read. We would read it together, and marvel and wonder. But soon it turned into poison. I ran away scared and you held it closer.
But that poison is the same kind that courses through veins of anger. It’s the same poison that courses through veins of pain.
So I’ll be careful. I’ll study the parts that seem too venomous, while you dive right in and let it take over.
You look like you’re trying, and I’m not buying it.
I use to lament the miles that separate us, but now i rejoice in the distance.
Stay over there, and I’ll be here.
I’ll live in the light, and fight fight fight back the memories of your hands on my body.
I’ll push away all the butterflies, and sweep them into the corner where they can decompose and slowly fade away.
I’ll let my insides, layer by layer, forget your voice. Forget your laugh. Forget even the way you move.
Because now, it’s her turn.
Now she gets to discover, each flaw, each tear in your integrity and character.
You’ll play the part, and act like it’s not hard for you to be okay with yourself.
Will she know as much as I do? Will she explore the places I had been before, and came to love more and more?
Will she get to whisper words we once shared under the summer stars and grassy fields?
Will you sing her songs by the shores and sunsets, while she sings along, better than my voice could muster.
Because I wonder.
I wonder if this will really last. I wonder if it’s just a cover, because God knows I’m not over-
Alright, you got me. I almost said it.
But I have to remember that your way of believing is a way of deceiving those you love into thinking you accept them, when really they are less than.
I look at the faces we grew to know together, I listen to the hearts of the ones who differ.
I can’t, you said.
With a stern mouth and fake face plastered on the man I once loved is now a little boy running scared for the corn fields.
You hide behind home baked pies and lies of an American Dream, an archaic stream, slowly drying up in a drought of reality. Of God calling us to look forward. Let’s walk through the desert. Let’s stumble through nothingness until you find it’s there that God speaks.
God speaks not to gender, not to race, not to attraction. God speaks to our bodies, God speaks to our communities, God speaks through our hearts.
Do not shame yourself for loving yourself. Do not tell me that I’ll shine brighter on my own. Do not tell me how to be, because I thought we were a team.
Secret glances and awkward run ins left me in the cold while you’re warm in the frosted lands. Stuck in the middle of worlds moving forward, caught in the eye of the storm where everything is the norm.
But the storm is coming. It’s gunning you down. I pray it hits you hard and knocks the doe eyed look out of your sockets. I hope it stirs the fire that once burned brighter, and I hope you find all the answers. I hope you know that life isn’t in one place. It’s the wind, blowing through trees, making the leaves sing. It’s the endless rhythm of the ocean caressing shores, and checking on it’s lovers. It’s the sound of still waters on a sunday afternoon.
Pull the grace from your face, and see that others need your help. Pull your head out from behind your own ambition and ammunition, and see that what we hold is not a weapon, but an endless procession of hurt and misrepresentation.
You see, there’s a book we would read. We would read it together, and marvel and wonder. But soon it turned into poison. I ran away scared and you held it closer.
But that poison is the same kind that courses through veins of anger. It’s the same poison that courses through veins of pain.
So I’ll be careful. I’ll study the parts that seem too venomous, while you dive right in and let it take over.
