I was starving
and you were my only food,
but you were also poison.
How brave I was back then,
when there were no other sources of sustenance in sight,
to turn away from you
and trust
that if I could only hold on a bit longer,
I’d be able to find some.
I did.
I once read in a book
that we won’t let anyone treat us worse
than we treat ourselves.
That makes me so excited for my next relationship,
because I’m treating myself better and better
every day.
_____________
“When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.”–African proverb
I’m so angry at you
for telling me I was special
but not treating me like I was.
But I’m angrier still at myself
for hanging on for dear life
to your empty words
Healing involved
not only learning what my love is worth,
but learning what your love was worth.
Namely,
it wasn’t worth selling everything I am
to acquire.
Growing up, I never learned how to dance with another person.
I learned how to orbit them,
for they were the center of gravity;
how to flatten myself against walls,
for they always filled the room.
So I’m working on learning those things now:
how to be equal,
how to take up space,
how to give and take,
how to dance.
If only I’d known
that your sense of intellectual superiority,
your inability to admit when you were wrong,
and your unwillingness to reconsider your opinions
were not signs of strength,
but signs of weakness.
They were what drew me to you
in the beginning,
and what pushed me away
in the end.
I was thrilled when I aced your tests
until I realized
that the right person
wouldn’t be testing me in the first place
———
Shoutout to Rachel Krantz, whose book Open: an Uncensored Memoir of Love, Liberation, and Non-Monogamy helped me a lot an inspired this poem.
If losing you
was the cost of finding myself,
it was a price well worth paying.
At the end of the day,
I didn’t want to be
one of the many moons
in your orbit.
I wanted to be
my own damn planet.
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.
Musings and Music 