THE boy on the playground shoves you, hard enough that you feel grains of sand pressing into your cheeks. You feel the sting of tears and humiliation and shame, and when you ask him, why? He will answer, because I love you.
When he says this, you have my permission to punch him in the gut.
He will reel back from the blow, shock and rage clouding his adolescent mind, because he did everything right, didn't he? Don't girls like to get teased? How else would he have let you know how he feels? His father had done the same thing, turning caresses into claw marks.
All this boy knows is how to act like the edge of a knife: slicing into flesh, hoping that the blood that pours out is something more than hurt and sorrow and suffering. Whenever he witnessed his old man lift a hand against his beautiful wife, he was told that it was because he loved her. After all, isn't love and pain the same thing?
The boy on the playground clutches his stomach. There are a thousand questions in his eyes, but there is only one directed to you. Why?
If this is how your love feels, you say, then I don't want it.
You leave before he says another word.
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A/N: i hope you all have a wonderful day and ps always remember that you deserve to be loved softly and wonderfully (side note who else is starting school soon cause i need someone to cry abt it with honestly im not ready)
YOU ARE READING
In Bloom
Poetry"FRAGILE, delicate, broken- words that I hope you never become." A letter from a mother to her future daughter. [#71 in Poetry 1.9.16]
