30/10/2020
I do not believe in love at first sight.
Probably because I do not consider myself an open book,
I am a locked dairy
Hidden beneath a mattress of insecurities I have spent years knitting together from scratch
And the only time I ever wear my heart on my sleeve
Is when it's bleeding between the margins of a page.
Even then it is still hidden behind metaphors
And punchlines that don't always hit hard enough for you to feel the full weight of message they try to carry across.
I get drunk off bottled emotions
Swallowing words
Until the ocean inside of me grows even deeper
And sadly I never learnt how to swim
So on most days I am drowning.
You cannot love a person at the bottom of an ocean by staring from a distance,
Love is not that simple.
Sometimes carrying a conversation is like building a life boat.
Sometimes love is knowing how to bring me safely to shore when I am drowning within myself.
Sometimes love means helping me rinse the salt water out of my bruises.
It takes time to build that kind of love.
Which is why so many settle for a fleeting glance,
A mumbled three worded sentence pieced together from a bunch of misconceptions
And new age jargon ripped out of shallow end of the spectrum of this multi-faceted gem
That in this world.. is as rare as innocence or compassion or everything else we traded for memes.. Likes and this desperate desire for attention.
I cannot believe in that kind of love...
So when I say I love you,
Know that I have studied the depth of you
And found beautiful in the salt water darkness where you hide the most fragile of your insecurities.
I'm sorry for any wrinkles I might have left behind on your pages from my persistent perusal
But I just can't get enough of you...
I want to bookmark every page
Because every story that inevitably led you to me
No matter how imperfect
Just has to be my favorite.
By Daniel K. Kamwi