05/23/2023
To the person I hope will never understand me,
I see you.
The start of something you think is lovely
Is absolutely terrifying to me.
The too long phone calls and
Non existent dates
Outside of a secluded bedroom,
The only place they care to see you.
One could claim it is to only form intimacy.
They know better. I do too, now.
They’re only glad this way is faster,
Without ever getting to know you.
Your smiles, laughs, the light that shines from your very face
Out of the simplicity of the smallest things
Means absolutely nothing.
Although your lips could form sweet words,
Like kissing pink clouds and sunshine,
You will find your voice does not matter,
Unless it could be heard
Struggling, behind the closed bedroom door.
Although you ruined their day
They still hold you hard enough.
That’s all you could wish for
After they had to push further
than your high school sweetheart should.
I never want you to know that.
Expression, fun, everything else you love
Is not something your partner should convince you to give up.
Your first date should not be a twin sized mattress,
While a movie you don’t care for plays.
To care for someone is to allow them space
As they are still human outside of you.
Your friends should not have to miss you.
I wish you will never know how far
Something like this will go if you embrace
The sunkissed snake that is manipulation
It is the only thing the sun will touch this summer.
A pale shell will crack as it continues to bite.
I am still attending to my wounds.
Because once you’ve been attacked
You’ll always be cleaning up.
The details of everything I know
Will not scare you.
It could never be you until after it is.
I spare you them,
Deciding that I only hope you’ll hear hazy warnings
And choose to heed them,
With the knowledge that I could be your future.
Venom kisses never left my veins.
Nonfunctioning head only feeling the biggest emotions
But none of them are any good.
Quivering bones, panging pains that really existed once
A pill a day to be a piece of the person there once was.
Stores are mountains I am terrified to climb alone,
The height brings me to tears once I retreat to the car.
Taking years to understand how real love should start,
And the difference in why they hold you.
A better person held my hand while we walked
And shared our sky’s rays.
For awhile I did not have much to say
But the right one bathed in the sound
Encouraging my voice to come back around
It took too long, but it has.
It is not the same at night.
When my real other half falls asleep first.
I am up all night, long past the toss and turn.
Pacing, I’m scared of nightmares that never went away.
The television wishes for a break that may never come.
Allowing the quiet is to let the past back in to scream at you all night.
When I crash into my dreams I always wish I didn’t.
I don’t even realize when I am awake
That is another thing the television is good for.
Without it I would cry, feel dead, suffocate in my panic
Because the nightmares always feel so real.
I am not trying to scare you
Like the silence and the dark that consumes me.
You just need to know that no matter how happy I am
The poor excuse for love that I once thought could be
Will always haunt me. I don’t run fast enough.
It would be unbearable to see the same happen to you.
You deserve more than this.
I know I did too.
Don’t go on to be my spitting image.
Sincerely,
A once mirror image of you.
