This poem is dedicated to a person who I’ll always love, and who showed me the meaning of unconditional love. (SBH)
Your love is a steady stream of water
carving away at my mountain of insecurities
Your love is a fierce gust of wind
wearing down my fears and past hurts
Your love is erosion
in the most beautiful way
(late 2019 or early 2020)
“I will not date again
until my insides feel right”
is the marching order
that gets me through the day
“But what if my insides
never feel right?”
is the haunting whisper
that keeps me up at night
In order to become the person I want to be,
I must pursue inner peace with the same fervor
that I used to pursue pleasure:
doing whatever it takes to get it,
no matter the cost.
I wish I’d learned earlier in life than I did that the nuts and bolts of a relationship are far more important than the cinematic, romantic parts.
————
You told me you don’t believe that connections like ours happen by accident,
implying that divine hands had pushed us together.
I agree, but I also don’t think connections like ours
happen for free.
Your fairy tale proclamations meant nothing
when you weren’t willing to make the sacrifices needed to choose me,
and no God who has my best interests at heart
would push me toward a cheap, distorted version of partnership
when I deserve the real thing.
No longer do I want to choose lovers
based on the fantasy of healing them
or of them healing me
I want someone
with whom I can walk side by side,
providing each other company
while we both heal ourselves
No longer do I want the sugar high
of consuming each other like candy
I want the difficulty and fulfillment
of nourishing each other like broccoli seeds
*I borrowed the broccoli seed metaphor from Gesturing Toward Decolonial Futures’ “Broccoli Seed Agreement.” Please check out their work! They’re amazing!
When I called you to apologize,
you gave me more grace than I thought you would.
You said you thought I was a good person, deep down.
Your words were like antiseptic on a wound—
they healed, but also burned.
Because I don’t want people to need a magnanimous shovel
to be able to uncover and see my goodness.
I don’t want to be a “good person, deep down”—
I want to be a good person.
I don’t care
if my poems
are just statements
with line breaks.
I love writing them,
and that’s what matters.
————————-
“Dude, sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something”-Jake the Dog
The title of this poem was inspired by this YouTube video.
sometimes, I feel at peace looking back
like our relationship served its purpose
and sometimes, I feel utterly disquieted
like that purpose was to haunt me
Today,
a girl wearing a long, loose, flowered skirt
and combat boots
walked by me in the library.
Her look
is exactly the persona I want to adopt:
metal hippie.
You need to know
that I want peace and love in the world
*AND*
will fuck shit up
to make that happen.
————————————————————
“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
–Martin Luther King, Jr.
I’m a master
at narcissistic, grandiose self-flagellation.
I purport to believe that no one is beyond redemption,
yet view myself
as the only person somehow bad enough
to be an exception to this rule.
But sometimes,
in moments of wisdom and peace,
I can see an order in the chaos of my past,
a perfection in the imperfection.
Perhaps I had to fuck up enough
to make my life painful enough
to motivate me enough
to work hard enough
to change.
———————————————————
Postscripts
A real question I’ve been contending with lately:
If I believe that no one is beyond redemption, but can’t extend that same mercy and compassion to myself, do I really believe it?
Guilt is just the ego’s way of tricking us into thinking we’re making moral progress”
-a nun in the book Eat Pray Love
Musings and Music 