they say you should find someone to make you love yourself first.
well they were right.
I know this because I love my hips now.
because your hands fit on them so beautifully that I pray they never change even the slightest bit.
you make me love how cold my feet get.
they go completely numb at times but the warmth of your legs shoots through my body and I wouldn't change it for anything.
you make me love my bad habits.
stupid, nervous issues but you notice them and love me anyway.
you make me love all the way down to how I breathe.
If you're anything like me you'd lay on my chest and count each breath, feel each inhale and exhale.
you make me love the way my voice sounds.
I could listen to your name all day, even when it's my own lips it rolls off of.
you make me love my short hair, even when it's grown out too much in spots.
you gave me the confidence to do it and the confidence to wear it every single day.
you make me love me. for every little thing I am.
because I know that you love every little thing about me too.
and something you love will always be worth loving to me too.

Where was I two years ago?
Nuzzling your hair?
Kissing your cheek?
Or was I numb with pain by now?
Every word choked out like pulling teeth.

Did we take a shower together that day?
Where I swore your body
Begged me to stay?
Did I ask you yet your reasons why?
Did you tell me nothing in reply?
Did I ask you yet if this was just a break?
Did I go to bed, praying I’d never wake?

I wish I had a family.
But instead I have relatives
Blood relatives
That I want to stay relatively far away from
Our clashing results in crashing
Yelling screaming madness
Angry words and bitter thoughts
Hatred boils beneath our
Loving, warm smiles
You can barely feel it sometimes
The tension in the room
And other times that tension
Is thicker than the air
None of us really care
None of us really want to be here
Trapped in this house together
We pretend we're not there
We pretend were anywhere
But where we are at the moment

so I brought my writer wife
(prominently pregnant)
to the hospital
and on her bed, she screamed:
"weren't" "hasn't" "couldn't" "shan't"
"aint" "hadn't" "you're" "isn't"
"aren't" "didn't" "wasn't"
"who's?" "what's?" "he's" "she's"

The doctors were confounded
and they turned to me and they said:
"What the hell is she doing?"

And I replied with double speed
and a violent sense of urgency:
*"Don't you know?
She's having contractions -
she's a writer"

The heart, full of hatred
Hardened with tarred emotions
It does not beat with rhythm of Love
Discolored beyond recognition
Pumping thick fluid of crass
Across all veins in the body
Paralyzing the mind and the limbs
Finally, hatred suffocates
Unable to breathe the fresh hope
As the body is full of vicious hatred
Asphyxiating the last breath of hope
To revive the chances of Love again
Hatred wins, and the soul, succumbs**



© Amitav (Radiance)