"unreciprocated" poems
if only my unreciprocated love
would cause me to throw up flowers,
you'd wake up to a garden and
see the beauty of the pain you've caused.
Dec 2, 2016
Dec 2, 2016 at 6:32 PM UTC
Unreciprocated love
It's a popular topic,
In songs and poems
The hurt you feel is so strong,
Always longing and looking.
What they don't tell you
Is how much it can hurt,
being on the other end.
Knowing that you could never understand
What they see in you
Or the depth of their affections
Knowing that you have broken someone.
You've fed the monster called fear,
And you know that you have only given them
more reason to doubt.
"I'm Sorry" you say.
Because it's the only thing you can say to someone,
When you have bruised their heart.
I wish you could understand,
Rejecting you hurts me.
We blame each other,
trying to find fault
until one comes to the conclusion,
Control is impossible.
Just like you can't force someone to love you
You can't force someone to unlove you.
So I let the anger go
And release you from your torment.
"End things on a good note" I tell myself.
So I do just that,
But no isn't in your vocabulary.
You will always be wanting and wishing
And hoping for me to change,
While I wait for you in turn.
But I guess we're both stubborn that way.
So I say goodbye to what we used to be,
Because we will never be the same.
Knowing that whenever you see me,
you will always want us to be more.
So rather then torturing you with a
distant, strained, friendship.
I scribble down my thoughts,
stick a stamp on it,
And watch it leave.
I had the last word.
I hope it brings you closure.
This is the last you will hear from me.
I hope I stay kind in your mind.
I hope I will be remembered as the girl who cared.
But I hope I fade out of your thoughts,
And be remembered as a dream.
Aug 17, 2018
Aug 17, 2018 at 7:55 PM UTC
I am empty.
And I don’t mean it metaphorically,
or poetically,
or romantically,
or in any other way you like to dress it up.
I am empty.
Straight up.
Unreciprocated love took everything.
And there’s nothing left.
Feb 11, 2025
Feb 11, 2025 at 5:19 PM UTC
Why love seems not enough?
Have I given a lot?
Or have you given me less?
Yet, it seems not enough.
Is it too much take?
I can't give you any less.
I can only give you lots.
Would you take it?
Words were spoken.
How much is true?
What does one weigh?
What does my love value?
Times were spent together.
Yet it was enough.
Here I am alone thinkin'
You could've spent more.
Sometimes love just ain't enough.
Two people fall in love.
Yet it might be unreciprocated.
Is it worth breaking?
Jun 2, 2016
Jun 2, 2016 at 10:11 AM UTC
We beg to be broken by love,
In hopes of feeling alive for just a moment;
Drunk on the feeling of bliss.
Over and over we touch the fires of lust;
Endlessly descending into heartache:
A bittersweet aphrodisiac.
Every kiss is a scar on the heart,
Every sweet nothing is a beautiful lie.
Oh, how good it feels to hurt:
Ecstasy buries us in a sea of false hope.
Promises made in a state of blind faith;
Unreciprocated feelings left to die in a casket meant for two.
We beg to be broken by love:
A guillotine built for hopeless romantics.
Sent off to Limbo by the patron saint of heartache;
Bleed well and bid blind romance farewell.
Perpetual suicide of the soul:
Holding hands with loneliness until the sun rises again.
Jul 6, 2018
Jul 6, 2018 at 1:37 PM UTC
I miss you.
I wanted to be yours and I loved that you were mine,
but I guess you didn't feel the same.
I didn't realize that you were on a tightrope of a thin line.
There is no one else to blame.
I want you.
You were the sun always shining on my rainy days.
I miss the you and me; rather than the me and my.
Life is wild now, like an endless maze.
I wish you never ended you and I.
I think I love you.
You were the only one.
I see you in my dreams, through day and night.
Like I said before, you were my bright sun.
If I could only see you one more time, it would be such a lovely sight.
If only you felt the same...I would ask you:
Do you miss me? As much as I miss you?
Do you want me? As much as I want you?
Do you love me? Do you think you do?
Because I know now that I'm in love with you.
Apr 8, 2014
Apr 8, 2014 at 8:59 AM UTC
All it took was one look from me
and you would have bent over backwards so easily.
I took advantage of the love you had
because I needed to fill a void so bad.
It’s true you knew how I felt for I wasn’t fooling anyone
but I still feel guilty for everything I have done.
I can see that you try and try and try
but this time you will have to tell me goodbye.
I will stop you from coming back and begging for more
because I need you to move on and realize you don’t deserve this unreciprocated love anymore.
Jan 16, 2022
Jan 16, 2022 at 11:06 PM UTC
I wish I could say something beautiful.
But all of the words I dance with keep stepping on my toes,
like the boy I danced with in 8th grade that told me
he was surprised by how graceful I was for my size.
I've always carried other people's grief and anger around in my extra pounds,
storing their feelings like I was preparing for winter
and I've never been graceful about it.
I fall and I stumble and I slip but at least I didn't step on Brandon's feet when I was so nervous about my first kiss following the Sadie Hawkins dance.
I wish I could say something beautiful,
but all of the metaphors I try to grow never bloom.
Because I overwater them the way I overwater all of the loved ones in my garden and all of the wildflowers in my lungs.
I've been told my thumb is black, and not green, because I never know when to stop piling fertilizer upon seeds that will never sprout,
and when to stop piling unreciprocated love upon the people that I care about.
I wish I could say something beautiful.
But my voice is always silent like lightning or booming like thunder
and I've never learned how to make it fill a room like the sound of rain,
without being a natural disaster.
I wish I could say something beautiful.
But I still have a hard time looking into a mirror without picking myself apart,
like diagramming myself for autopsy before I've ever even pulled the trigger.
How could I ever produce something beautiful, when I can't understand the work of art that I am?
How could I say something beautiful, when I stand in my hallowed exhibition hall and refuse to paint my walls because I'm so afraid of making mistakes?
How could I say something beautiful, when I'm afraid to frame my best qualities because what if other people think that they're overrated? Overrated like seeing the Mona Lisa in person and still not understanding what the **** she's smiling about.
How could I say something beautiful when I've never been able to appreciate the different hues and shadows and brush strokes that fill my skin and my mind and my mouth?
I've never been able to appraise and value myself because I'm afraid I'll never sell and never find a home.
How could I say or create or become something beautiful when I'm so preoccupied with imitating others' paintings instead of allowing myself to be my own masterpiece?
I wish I could say something beautiful, but maybe the most beautiful thing I could say in this moment is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder,
and kid you gotta be beholden to yourself instead of those critics in your art gallery.
Jul 15, 2018
Jul 15, 2018 at 4:32 AM UTC
The evenings cold enough to require a sweater
but still too warm for the biting winter wind,
to cut through our clothing
like hot knives through butter;
these are the not-quite nights,
the dusks of the almost-autumn
and the too-late summer,
with the drizzle dripping requiems
for sunshine longings and July dreams.
These are the nights that I am torn
between walking alone with the chill in my bones,
sedate with the cold but alive,
or begging for a body
to drift alongside,
radiating an unreciprocated warmth;
someone with hands stuffed
into night-bitten pockets,
too cool and stiff to really chatter
but hoping for the shared sympathy
of frozen, rain-speckled skin.
We are gliding across the fallen leaves--
the dying brethren of the trees--
that crackle slow beneath our feet
like summer candy wrappers, drifting.
But we’re still slowly freezing,
shrugging threadbare shoulders
under threadworn sweaters
that still reek of the past.
And we’re still gently waltzing,
disinterested fingers on uninteresting waists
trampling scarlets and golds under
careless heels in three-four beats.
As the twilight fades into ink,
a hollow, whispering breeze reminds
of the clouded distance between us
and the heavy, rain-laden sky.
Nov 14, 2013
Nov 14, 2013 at 1:35 AM UTC
My expectations take flight as we wonder through this once youthful and promising night. The only hope for a tomorrow comes with forbidden touch and a forbidden, connected sight. Longing for a quiet moment alone as your eyes slowly shift to meet mine. Connected hands pulling from considerable constrains as the clock gradually strikes nine. The world begins to slow as if to say there may not be another. Or rather there may not be another one worth your passion now uncovered. Resurrected from our past as our softened minds are kept in a hazy check. By wondering eyes, unreciprocated passions, and friendly arm around our neck. And though instants stole in the shadow of the masses bring forbidden thoughts to light. Kinship to another uncovers doubt with a strong, unrelenting might. Unremitting hesitation as we’re forced to balance our duty and what we know as true. To those we brought to conquer the night and to our passions we wish to pursue. And as our night moves towards dawn we watch the other move along, towards a night of least resistance. With once promising passion now unwillingly forgone, and the other lost to the distance. Slowly awakening to our regret as the other does the same. Wondering if the night was different could our lust have been ours to claim. Would our desire to move beyond our duties have been made with worth and good intent. With others consent and no argument for the decisions we now circumvent. So with our train of thought chasing an end to our sorrow filled silence we search for just one more glance. Only to find remorse and a white flag waving reluctantly at our lost chance. And as the metal doors close on our promising night we wonder could this have been real. As I steal one more glance with the turning of the wheels putting miles towards our past so surreal. Hoping only for fate to smile again and give our passions a chance once more. Of a night filled with desire, lust, and affection that our destiny wishes to restore.
Aug 18, 2013
Aug 18, 2013 at 8:15 PM UTC
It's a shared pain that shifts weight as denial grows. Each of us has suffered the grief of loyalty unreciprocated.
You held my faith as I held your hand. Your grip loosened and like salvaging a favorite paperback book, pages slipped out individually until an empty shell met back to front.
That shared pain is called to fill in the empty spaces that naïveté leaves. The weight becomes a burden on those of us who expect more.
There is no resolution for betrayal. I lock my fears up tight and covet the pain.
You can see the ones who shoulder this burden in the warm grave of routine, going through the motions of daily life without a smile or by putting off life's responsibilities for the sake of blissful sleep.
Jan 4, 2014
Jan 4, 2014 at 7:18 AM UTC
It's the kind of relationship
where he says
I love you
and I say
thank you.
Dec 17, 2017
Dec 17, 2017 at 10:22 PM UTC
I miss the days when we can just love carelessly and not think about what might happen.
Im tired of the unreciprocated love and affection
The constant worry of uncertainty where we stand with someone
Tired of losing sleep thinking if the one you fell for is actually thinking of you.
Im tired of one way relationships
Tired of the lying, deception and getting used.
Im tired of being in and out of toxic relationships
Tired of people that are still secretly into their exes
Im tired of the lack of communication
Tired of the callousness
Im tired of the lack of effort to understand
Tired of being left alone when you need someone the most.
Im just...
Tired
Sep 3, 2018
Sep 3, 2018 at 6:58 AM UTC
Those blue eyes bore into my heart like the icy ocean against the rocky land.
The blood spills out as you do, leaving me with nothing but emotions I do not want, do not need.
That beautiful mind of yours far exceeds the capacity of mine.
The blood spills out as you contradict and challenge my character.
You make me tremble in fear, for I do not want any of this, yet I do.
You make my heart beat sporadically, for I don't know how else to react when I see you.
You make my hands shake as I take up my scalpel and make a cut. Again, the blood pours.
You make me sick with wretched self-consciousness.
And yet I cannot help but wonder how it would feel to kiss those hard lips of yours.
To embrace those arms I don't believe have truly embraced someone else before.
To finally see some emotion in those dead, logical, calculating blue eyes.
Can I even admit it to myself that I could love someone like you?
Someone like me who knows what she wants but can't have it.
Someone who knows she doesn't want you even when the blood is all over her face.
Someone who is currently debating with herself, struggling to decipher the emotions she feels with you.
Me...
Those hands are strong, and unyielding, just like your thoughts.
Those hands that have no doubts before action as you sand away every layer I put up to protect myself with.
Unlike my mind, that falters, that hesitates before everything I do.
What am I even doing here? What am I even doing? Can I remember how to breathe?
These brown eyes want their fill of you.
This brown hair want their thick ropes to be intertwined between your fingers.
This body's blood yearns for your body's blood.
Are we ready for each other's unreciprocated love?
Jul 21, 2012
Jul 21, 2012 at 2:56 AM UTC
Some battles are so intense
That we lose in love, they say
But we often refuse to accept
That truly loving is this way.
In love, we count our losses
that our bare backs dare to hold
and find each one heavier than the last
as though we lose tenfold.
And yet the sacrifices made inevitable
are ones often unreciprocated
And make us question our innocent selves
of why we even made it.
But love is love, as they often say
And we lose ourselves when it is true,
But how much is lost is merely dictated
by the choices made by you.
Apr 21, 2021
Apr 21, 2021 at 4:11 AM UTC
You are both suffocating.
He finds his air in the space that he’s not getting,
You find it in the words that he's not saying,
You both turn blue.
You are both unhappy.
His face makes that burden lighter,
Your face is just another one on the pile.
You both see the meaning in the word “crush”
You are both looking for an escape.
To him, you are a cage,
To you, he is the key,
You both are trapped.
Both eyes stand open,
His are mahogany with rims of gold and flecks of amber,
Yours are brown,
Neither of you are color-blind.
You both share the same humor,
Your laughter is loud and carries,
His laughter is music and dances,
Both of your stomachs hurt.
You both sit silently,
He enjoys the quiet,
You enjoy his presence,
Neither of you speaks.
Jun 22, 2015
Jun 22, 2015 at 1:03 AM UTC
Aphrodite, goddess of love
twist your branches of willow around me
gust your warm winds against my numb skin
cover my tongue in the taste of strawberries and chocolate.
I want to sing the sound of you
I want to know the feeling of your lips on mine
I want to be loved.
I am all too familiar with unreciprocated love
it tastes bitter, like black coffee and raw sage
I long for a sweeter taste
I long for someone to numb the sting.
so come to me, my dear
there is no need to be afraid
I will make you a cup of galaxies
it will taste like hot chocolate with extra milk
together
we will connect the constellations at the bottom of your cup.
Jan 4, 2017
Jan 4, 2017 at 11:38 PM UTC
That song, that awful terrible song.
The absurd sting. The foolish decision. The irony of it all.
Me, staring down at the black and white grin of the piano keys,
every atom in my body screaming with awareness of you.
If I didn’t look at you, not even once.
If I kept my gaze elsewhere. If I leveled my tone to a sedated monotone.
If I talked about pace and rhythm and chorus and speed up there and slow down here and yes, yes, like that, beautiful. If I didn’t watch your hands on the bow or the bow on the strings
or the light on your face. If I crushed those violets of want blooming in my belly.
If I built myself a castle of steel through which you could never penetrate, maybe,
maybe, I could reach a quivering sort of equilibrium.
But that song. The melody mocking me, mocking my heartache,
pointing to my hidden places and yanking the curtain aside.
It shouldn’t have been romantic, not the stone in my chest, nor the
frigid fact of my unreciprocated feelings
but god, the room shrank until it seemed as if you had hollowed me out and
saturated me with yourself, that the end of me
and the beginning of you had become completely indistinguishable,
my heartbeat so loud we should have heard it echo off the walls.
That song and that glow and that loss. That soft desire, that song
I should never have suggested we play, that ruin.
That song and you and
you.
Apr 11, 2016
Apr 11, 2016 at 1:07 PM UTC
I have to fit my hand into yours,
like forcing misfit puzzle pieces together,
just to get you to hold my hand
©L.F.
Jul 17, 2019
Jul 17, 2019 at 1:07 AM UTC
My meds don't work and my therapist hates me.
My friends have given up on me after years of unreciprocated attempts to connect.
I lack the energy and drive to live productively most days
and
Although I do not agree with what they do -
I envy the commitment and determination set forth by
serial killers.
It is difficult for me to enjoy art nowadays.
Not for lack of quality
but
because
it reminds me that I lack the ability
to create something that moves others
the way that art moves me
My message very rarely conveys the depth
of my experience.
I am lost mostly
I use these words to make sense
of what makes no sense at all.
Jul 8, 2013
Jul 8, 2013 at 7:35 AM UTC
I'm all alone. And it's not because I've pushed people away, because I have made it a goal to bring people closer. But my sister and mother will drive away and not invite me to be with them because I am too mean. I'm too selfish and delusional, and psychotic to participate in normal human interaction...or at least that's what they've told me. "Go complain to your therapist." "You're stupid." "You're ungrateful." I've heard it all. And this low is so ******* low, that I don't know if I'll ever go back up. My mom told me to lock the door behind me. I didn't. I didn't lock it because I don't care if a ****** or murderer walks in. Let them hurt me, it's hard to believe that I could be in more pain than I'm in right now. But that's stupid, because each day that I live proves that further pain does exist. No one want me. No one wants to be with me. I want to escape into bottles of alcohol and **** and pills, but I can't, because my ***** of a mother drug tests me. I can't begin to explain how ****** up I am. I can't begin to explain the everlasting agony that burn in my heart. My family, they're gone. I'm nothing to them. And I thought that there was one person worth living for, because I'm in complete and total love. But the love is unrequited, unreciprocated, and empty. So what more is there? How much harder can I try? I can't.
Nov 29, 2013
Nov 29, 2013 at 12:30 PM UTC
My heart always skips a beat
Each time my eyes find you
It's sweet
Yet I hope you knew
I love and wish to spend every waking day with you
How I wish you knew
Yet you like someone new
And no longer see me
Heartaches
Longing and hoping
To have reciprocation
But alas
You may like someone new..
Mar 10, 2022
Mar 10, 2022 at 10:03 PM UTC
CAIN
By Ariana Reines
The city was humming gently under me
Like an adolescent quaffing deeply
from the cup of righteousness
Out of practice with my own world
I was looking at how someone else saw it
Longer than I realized
Longer than I care to admit
Those goggles left a mark on me
Then I stared at my own face
An invitation came with my face
To melancholy while Nature
Purred at the edges of my perception
And before me lay a broad road
Enjoining me to do of myself and make
Of myself according to the American
Tradition. Secretly I felt and knew
Things I had not perceived my body
Turning into secrets. In other words
I did not notice the mechanism
By which something within me noted
My experiences and apprehensions of ‘the truth’
Would not be met with favor if I spoke them
Which is not to say one speaks only to find favor
Only that unreciprocated realities have a boring
Way of haunting the cells
Pulling them somehow down
Like the countenance of Cain
Which fell one day and never rose
Again, and the fall of his face
Rhymed with the fall out of Eden
Leading to the first murder and the invention
Of cities, where we now find ourselves
Each tower the ghost of a farmer
Who failed to meet the favor of the Lord
<|>
Anne Boyer is a poet and an essayist. Her memoir about cancer and care, “The Undying,” won a 2020 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. Ariana Reines is a poet, a performing artist and a playwright from Salem, Mass. “A Sand Book” won the 2020 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. She runs Invisible College, a study hall for poetry, sacred texts and the arts. This poem is from her next book, “The Rose.”
Sep 23, 2023
Sep 23, 2023 at 10:24 AM UTC
A demure river converges with the sea and turns into a scepter of intrepidity.
My eyes try to follow every ebbing wave into the strands of illimitable resurrection.
The wind carries the clouds toward a ruffled terrain and turns sunshine into rain.
Reckless movements seem to convey the act of solicitous tenderness.
A forsaken lighthouse on a deserted island tries to revitalize the ship that never arrived.
The enlightenment seems to brighten up its separateness
From the world of decreasing congeniality.
The resplendent pasture seems to absorb the colour from the verdant trees.
Scintillating dewdrops variegate the cusp of the grass like an exhilarating crown.
The inaudible murmur of pastoral life wraps the passing day in its tranquil impeccability.
The lucent stars seem to burn the vacuousness of night with its satiating fire.
Nature seems to have become the harbinger of my lost words
That long ago manifested my dauntless but wretched love for you.
The uncanny omnipresence of the unbarred memories seems to amalgamate
The unreciprocated past and the abeyant present.
Stirring thoughts in an invigorating mind seem to lose its scrupulousness
In the midst of these harrowing days of ruthless truthfulness.
The metaphors of nature seem to have juxtaposed with the feeble pieces of my fragile heart.
The ineradicable retrospection of moon-sharing nights seem to have emerged
From the irreducible darkness around me.
The twinkling shadows of inseparable hearts seem to converge
Into the enticing hills of the unlit valley.
The honest moon seems to have lost its sagaciousness in the night of relinquished lovers.
The closing day is enamored of the festering odor of onrushing annihilation.
The transcendental road to salvation merges into the heath of transcalent despondency.
Apr 1, 2017
Apr 1, 2017 at 11:53 PM UTC