Have you ever felt a love so fiery that you were afraid it would burn you alive? If you are reading this, go ahead and flip through these next 50 pages. Read these poems. This is our love's burial ground, after all. It's only fitting you should be fitting to the funeral.
You weren't bad at the start, but no love is. But I feel like you - and they - should know that I still remember how it felt when it was light, and happy, and kind. I remember every second before the storm rolled in. We only had a few moments of sun, anyway.
Your touch sent an electric shock straight to my heart. I should have known. God, I should've fucking known.
The poems about blood started with you. Dripping arteries, jagged wounds, tattered skin - it all began with you. I sit down to write about you and all I think about it disaster. I compare you to a gunshot wound. To a shark attack. To being on the front line for a hurricane. I think that was the quietest way of ruining me. You took my poetry and made it violent.
After the dust had settled, you spent a lot of time trying to reassure everybody that there were good parts about us. "We loved each other a lot, you know," you would say, as if lots of love cancels out lots of abuse. It doesn't. "There were good parts about us," you would tell me, as if I wasn't aware, like I didn't write a poem with that as the literal first line. I think you thought that, amongst all the hatred and rage, I had forgotten why I fell in love with you in the first place. I don't ever forget that. That isn't what you have to worry about. No, what you have to worry about is what to do with that first flame. I might cherish those memories with a smile, or I might rip them apart in my head until I don't understand what the point of us was at all.
Relationship status: It's complicated (again)
We were okay. Happy, even. I could smile at the thought of how you (I) would look. I would even be excited to see you (myself). But suddenly, you're gone, and he's everywhere. And I can feel it creeping in once more: the urge to leave. To throw myself into him. At some point, I stop fighting it. I'm sorry, again
How do you light a fire in someone yet put it out at the same time? It was a constant cycle of back and forth; one minute I was burning, the next I was drowning. I no longer knew what was worse: to be hurt by you, or to be in love with you despite it.
Scene:
We rarely got to see each other, but when we did, it was more than special. There were three days where we were together at a convention for school. Three days of sneaking around, three days of touches and looks and words. I kiss you in the stairwell, and you press me up against the wall. Everything is fire. When I leave, you hold me. "I love you," you say, "more than anything." I walk away believing it.
End scene.
10 minutes later, you made out with another girl. Did you ever mean a thing you said to me?
This is an angry poem. It is bloody and it is wounded, and it is angry. I keep saying that this will be the last thing. The last metaphor, the last analogy. I keep telling myself that this will be the last poem, but you're so fucking easy to write about because it's so fucking easy for you to get under my skin. You never even left. And you don't even do anything, that's the funny part. You don't do a damn thing, because you don't care anymore. You're gone, disappeared. You do not give a shit about me, but the songs still do. The poetry still does. How easy it must have been for you to leave such a permanent mark on me. I'm as impressionable as clay. Slam your hands on me and walk away laughing because the mark will still be here months after you've washed you're hands of me. I wake up every morning and I say, "today is the last day." But my body, still molded by your fingertips says, "no. Not yet." This is an angry poem. It is bloody and it is wounded and it is angry. Angry at what? I'm not even sure anymore. Some says I think I'm still angry at you but really, I think I'm just angry at myself for not being able to get you out of my skin.
Despite all the lies you told me, and half-truths that danced past your lips. Despite all the words tied to me that dragged me
d
o
w
n
I was too blind to see that you were only
bre a k
ing
me
Because that is love in its cruelest form.
You fed me apologies out of your hand like I was your fucking dog.
I don't think you knew just how badly I wanted us to make it.
I want to apologize to all the would-be lovers I pushed away without giving them a chance, To all the friends I didn't listen to because they didn't "understand." To everyone who saw this coming so much earlier than I did.
Sometimes you can be toxic too. Sometimes you do something to hurt them just because you feel like they deserve it. Sometimes you turn into the person who's poisoned you the most. Sometimes you let it happen. Sometimes you think it's the only way to live anymore. That it's easier to be cruel. That it's simpler to be fake. That the right way to live is by ensuring other people don't. That breaking hearts is the only way to keep yours safe. But let me tell you something. It's not the only way. You are a victim of circumstance. You begin to become toxic when it is the only thing you know anymore. When it is what holds you at night and kissed you good morning. Please fight that poison. I beg you to fight it. It is not the only way to live. The people who are the most toxic, who hurt people and look the other way, who jump from heart to heart and leave nothing but destruction in their path, who think it's all fun and games- they are less alive than anymore. They are the ones not living, who have hearts that beat but don't bleed. Do not be fooled by their stone-cold exterior. They may seem better off, but they are dead. On the inside, they are dead.
You broke me quietly. So quietly, that I didn't even notice all the cracks until you were long
g o n e.
Sometimes I worry that maybe I asked for too much, but all I wanted was honesty, all I wanted was your truth, and I asked if you had kissed her and getting the answer was like pulling a mosquito from tree sap - sticky and messy and damn near impossible. I ask you now if you always meant to lie to me, you say no of course not, but my fingers still feel a little bit stuck.
I loved you so damn much. Almost more than how much I hated the way our love felt under my skin.
If you ever wondered what/ it felt like to have an iron chain/ cuffed/ to your carotid/ then meet somebody like/ like you/ I don't know how it feels/ to not have you branded/ into my skin/
hey/ you know/ who you are/ your name is/
you know/ what/ you did/
you
/ / me
/ / me
/Insert what you want here because you did it/ me
I'm trying not to love you by forgetting your name/ but the weight of it will always/ be/ here
like/ deadweight/
like/ an anchor/
like/ you/
like/ /
like/ /
YOU ARE READING
Shades of lovers
PoetryThis is a story of breaking and healing, of forgiving but not forgetting, of understanding and balance. It is not only something to enjoy, but something to learn from. Here are the things I did right, and the many things I did wrong. I give them to...
