You may not be able to control the way you feel or react in regards to specific things but you can alter your level of engagement with it.

Focus not on what could’ve been or what was but instead where you are now.

The should’ve, could’ve, would’ve is not at all conducive to your actuality. It’s not going to change the outcome.

Just because your feelings were hurt doesn’t mean you were wronged.

You can be right or you can be effective.

Sometimes you are a villain and perpetrator of harm.

It’s okay to be the bad guy in some people’s recollections.

Engage with your wants and desires in a way that is not detrimental to you.

Believe people until they give you a reason not to.

Don’t engage in discourse with people who are committed to misunderstanding you.

Sometimes a persons behavior has nothing to do with you but everything to do with who they are. Don’t take it personally. Move on accordingly.

I’ve waited my entire life for this grudge against you to become undone.
Yet every attempt to reconcile the past doings with the present circumstances is met with another unforgivable happening taking place in a real time.
Positioning me further away from you
Caught between meeting your level of escalation and

Echoing the following sentiments to myself:
“stop taking it personal, it’s who they are"
Over and over and over.

And I’m only left to remember what you’ve done to me.
And how burdened your mere presence makes me feel.

I can only imagine how burdened you feel too.
Far before you were a villain in my recollections
You were a victim in your own right.

It may be true that you are not the worst of what you’ve done
But you sure do bring out the worst in me.

Oh, the grueling beauty of duality and multiple truths existing at once.

You feel my heart with contentment
And my mind with ease.
You possess a heart of pure, untainted gold.
A smile brighter than any sun I’ve ever seen during the afternoon in the middle of June.
And the healing powers of a God.
To know you is to love you.
It is with immense pleasure that I am able to live in a moment where those dual truths exist.

I’d give you the world if I could.
But it’s far too imperfect for your precious hands to hold.
So for now my heart will have to do.
It’s in the process of healing and skipping a beat too many, just for you.

I wish loving you in the ways you deserve was as easy as loving you in general.
The love that I have for you is nothing in comparison to the ways that I could illustrate them.
The ways that I could enact them for you without fear, because you are the only member in the audience.
Beaming with pride and satisfaction. Applauding my efforts to do right by you.
Because I would love nothing more than to perform for you with Boundless Love as my co-star.

People congratulated me and I felt displaced because I had no business at this affair.
This was no feat. No accolade. Nothing to celebrate.
They congratulated me and every time they did it made you a little more alive. A little more human. A little more of a blessing, and not the worst possible thing that could ever happen to me.
And I hated every minute of it.
Because everyday that I was forced to allow you to grow, I felt myself shrinking as I grew more detached from my own body.
Every attempt to nourish myself turned into a regurgitation session.
Of my meals.
Of my pride.
Of my strength.
And some wanted me to feel guilty because I didn’t desire to gift you with life.
To be your mother.
But my love, it wasn’t you.
It was everything that happened before you that left me on the edge of my bed crying at the thought of being unable to love you in the fashion that you deserved.
So that’s why we can’t be together. At least not now.
But if given the chance again, after my wounds aren’t so fresh And there’s nothing left but healed scars to tell my story... I’d bleed myself dry for you instead of bleeding you out.

If I told you I knew how this would end, what would you believe me to be?
A psychic?
A realist?
A pessimist?

What if I told you I’m simply just cursed with the inability to love without conditions?

I got it from my momma.
Who got it from her momma.
And so on...

I enjoy loving you when you’re not within my reach
Everything I touch soon becomes a thing of the past
Eventually a distant memory...
I dont want to have to forget you like I have with all of those that came before you.

I’ve always believed myself to be the kind that wears my heart on my sleeve but Truth is I never allowed myself to feel close to anyone unless I was naked.

He was a simple man
That stood about 5’4 inches high
With light brown skin
And light brown eyes
He was a simple man
Whom I can write about all day but there isn’t enough hours in the day on military time
He was
Always faithful
Semper Fi

I love you
Even when I’m battling the powers that be
The very powers that lead me to you
And you to me
I love you
Because I’m only human after all.

I think that you and I are the right equation
So now I’m trying to show my work
By subtracting the hesitancy
Holding your heart
Carrying the love
Multiplying them both
Until love is no longer binary
But I’m stuck.
Truth is I’ve never been good at arithmetic

I believe in love.
But not the unconditional kind.
I believe in love that understands that love isn’t always enough.
I believe in love that relies on other entities to sustain itself.
I believe in love as it should be:
Fluid.
Transparent.
Reciprocal.

In the matters of loving freely
I confess my guilt  
And If that were to be a crime
Then I guess I shall Be charged
with doing so at the Nth degree

I’ve loved many times before
But not like this
To love you is to do so intentionally
It is to love deeply
To be given the space to express myself colorfully
All the time
To love you is to also love myself and to find immense comfort in knowing that you love me too
My heart is open
My heart is full

Rediscovering you in my most chaotic hour is like serendipity
Meets fate
With a hint of Gods will
all coming together to create an undying love and vast uncertainty out of fear of the unknown.

"Will they ever love me at even a shred of the capacity in which I love them?"

Is this even what God intended?

I’ve been trying to find ways to express my love for you on a plain white piece of paper, void of margins
Because my love can’t be confined between thin blue lines....

My love is open
It is free
It is unmeasurable.

I’ve been trying to find ways to express my love for but the English language is too premature

Truth be told, every language is really.

The first mistake I made
Was allowing you to make me believe
I ever owed you an explanation

The truth is
It was always written in the stars

You chose not to look up and see

My grandma used to say
That true willpower resided within the person
Who was able to acknowledge when someone had them ****** up
While taking it in stride
Without allowing anyone to have such a hold on you that you lose your religion
Or state of mind
Just be and
Allow God to handle everything that follows.

My mother taught me the importance Of accountability
Meaning, when you do something, own it. Correct it.

Not because she enacted it but because she didn’t.

The most profound lesson that my father left with me is the mere unpredictability of life itself.
Here today,
Gone by tomorrow.
Much to my surprise....

I remember believing the best way to love was to do it unconditionally...
That to love blindly
Was to love deeply
And to love with boundaries
Was like not loving at all

Love is supposed to be a mere emotion
Not physically seen
But internally felt
And the rest is up to fates discretion

Love without condition.
Love without rules.
Love without boundaries.

Yet when I attempt to replicate that...

the love becomes unsustainable
Intangible
Unattainable

And so called unconditional love morphs into

Love with harbored resentments

From all the flaws I was suppose to learn to love that I could never find myself to
And all of the things I was supposed to ignore that I never did
To accept all the hurt I never truly healed from

Carelessly trying to offer up understanding
When in all actuality I’m not as pragmatic and as patient as this notion insists that I should be

I cannot love you unconditionally

To love you isn’t to just simply tolerate you

It is to confront you
It is to disagree with you
It is be grow frustrated with you
It is to need space

To love you is to comfort you
To love you is to desire you
To love you is to grow with you
It is to occupy the same the space as you
And to feel
Content with you

Not stagnant

But contentment

To love you
I have to do so conditionally
And that’s okay

Love is all just a needless want
And merely just a burning desire
Until
The feeling of his gentle touch
Makes your heart skip a beat
Or two
Maybe even three
And the sound of his heartbeat
becomes
Your favorite song
The taste of his lips
Become an undying
Craving
The smell of his cologne transfers
Unto you
Seemingly blessing you
With his signature aroma

And with the slightest gaze at him,
You begin to see love personified
As an action

Love was all just a needless want
Until loving you
Became my sixth sense

I hated crying
because it
Made me
Feel weak.

I never
realized the power
that lied within
each tear I shed,
allowing me to release


And move on.

I remember the day my dad left
With his luggage in his left hand
And plans to never return on his mind

It took me a lifetime to trust him
And a single moment for him
To disregard it

I acquired many fears before you
So I maneuver in cautionary silence
Because of them
hoping one can hear me

Not even you

I fell in love with you
Then I fell in love with the idea of us

It happened
In that order
For the first time
Ever

A chronological
Actuality

The moment
The poet
Falls in love
Is the moment
Your being
Is immortalized
Forever

The being
Of my dreams
Personifies love
In reality

Amongst this
Untouched
Skin
and all of
these
Layers
Of emotion
Remain
Undisrupted
Thoughts of
You

I believed I needed
A change
So I enacted
One
I meditated to
Balance my
Chakras
I prayed,
And I don’t even
Believe in God
I sit alone  
With Sam Cooke’s
A Change Is Gonna Come
On repeat
As if that act of insanity
Is gonna bring about anything
Different

I’ve been at a loss.
One unspoken,
Invisible,
And even unknown for that matter

It just lingers
Haunting me
in the most
Surreal yet familiar
fashion

And then,
I remember what it
was like
to love
in August.

Confusion breeds uncertainty
And I certainly have no prior
Knowledge on how to
Raise changeability
Or guide indecision

I miss making compromises
That didn’t feel
Like compromises
Because I loved
You
Enough to
Adjust
And be content
Within the confines
Of your comfort

Every aspect of His caress is rather other worldly
The way his warm hands manage to soothe the aching within the indent of my spine

I then slip into an alternate universe
With my eyes tightly shut
As I am introduced to this Euphoria
By the smoothest baritone I’ve ever had the pleasure of recognizing

                    The voice of God

He loved me like
He loved he loved
Those action figures
He once played with
When he was a boy

We were both mere objects to him
Allowing him to control our narrative
And dictate our every move

Giving his ragged ego
A stroke or
too many

We taught him
What power felt like

And now he’s unable
To relinquish his hold

I’m afraid to fall in love
Not because of any superficial reasoning
Tied to trust
Or anything else of the sorts

But because I don’t like balance
I prefer my universe to be as shifted
As my point of view in the late hours of the night

I’m afraid that once
I find Stability
Things will start to make sense

And that is simply inappropriate
Because it’s natural

I’ve never been keen on the idea
Of reversing fate
But sometimes I wish
I could go back to the day
In which
all we were able
To visualize was each other

The day
We got lost in each others gaze

Because you no longer
search for me anymore
And now I wish to unsee you
Every time I close my eyes

The anniversary of my birth
Will be celebrated
(or lack thereof)
In 17 days.

I have 17 days
And 17 pages left
To write about

The Things I Lost When I Was 17

We’d talk so long
That we became utterly
Oblivious to the
Concept of time

Conversations about a
Whole lot of nothing
Turned into a great deal
of somethings and so on...

And then
We ran out of things to say

Time was all we had

I write about you still
Not in hopes that one day
You’ll pay attention
And read my chicken scratch
between the invisible lines;

But instead
To commemorate my recollections of you

I never want to feel myself forgetting you
Like I feel you forgetting me

I baptized myself  
In the shower this morning

It sure didn’t help any though

I’m not
Repenting my sins
And I’m
Still too stubborn to ask for forgiveness

It’s like I moisturized myself
With gasoline
And ran into a fire

When we were together
I listened to a great deal of
Maxwell

Because we were in
our honeymoon phase
Residing in his Urban Hang Suite

Now I’m stuck
Listening to track 7
On a Blacksummers Night

With nothing left but a
Fistful of Tears

“It won’t be
soon before
long that you and I reach
our own Eutopia

Because I feel
our souls finding Harmony
Together

We grow closer each day as we find each other’s rhythm”

Yet you sing at a different register than
I do
You’re never on key

It’s almost as if
You’re tone-deaf

You say I’m difficult to read
Sort of like
A run on sentence
Or chicken scratch on paper
But not quite like writing in invisible ink

You say I’m difficult to read
But it’s not because you comprehend at an accelerated pace
It’s because you’re still at an intermediate level
Attempting to analyze an enigma

Falling in love
Is reminiscent of Maxwells’
Whenever Wherever Whatever
On replay on a sunny spring day

Maybe because I am in Love
Not just in distorted memory
But in vivid reality
And that sunny spring day
Was yesterday
And today

And so on...

Until all the seasons have passed
And days turn to nights

Together
Forever

I loved you
Long before I was able
To make your acquaintance

Now we are the dearest of friends.
The most dynamic of duos.

And I’m forced to portray a facade
In which I deem my love for you
Simply

Platonic

I dreamed the most surreal of dreams
About you
And me
Yet when I awoke
I forgot it within an instant

When I awoke all I had left was
A slight memory of what it felt like to love you
In the present tense
Because I was robbed of the chance to do so
Way back when

My imagination was actuality

I dreamed the most surreal of dreams
About you
And i
Yet when I awoke
I forgot it within an instant

When I awoke all I had left was
A slight memory of what it felt like to love you
In the present tense
Because I was robbed of the chance to do so
Way back when

My imagination was actuality

In reflection
I’ve concluded
That my pain
Is multi-dimensional
And multi-faceted

Yet,
There is one commonality within it

But it is not you

It is
People
Like you