i know itâs long but i promise itâs worth the read <3
âsomeone once told me, your poem doesnât start until you start telling the truth. so i call this my first poemâ.
let me tell you what i learnt about people. Â no, not people in general, but the hard ones. Â i donât mean complicated or troubled, but hard as in tough, in all the wrong places.
when they flash you with a smile like the sun that creeps through your window when you just wake up, you know you should look away because it hurts your eyes, but you look anyways. Â it shines, in all the rooms in your body that are lacking light.
so when they see you smiling back, they will string a constellation of pretty words along your spine, making you feel like they are the reason you are standing so bright,
and when you put a welcome sign in front of your heart,
thatâs when they jaywalk through your chest
even though they have no intentions of staying
yet they will stay long enough for you to hand over your heart, like a piece of gold youâve been treasuring your whole life,
and carelessly they take it because you are the type of gold they need to experience having-
so even though they know they will hurt you, they place you between their dirty fingers and
tell you something along the lines: âIâve never felt so rich, like i have everything right hereâ.
âbaby, you have everything, everything i am, right there, in that palm, please be carefulâ
but instead you kiss them and they kiss you back
and their hands start wandering the map of your body and all you could think of is
travelling never felt so cheap
And their mouth starts eating you up like you are every craving needed to satisfy their taste buds
because this is how you make a man happy. this is how you make a man love you.
and thatâs when everything changes.
when they feel every edge that you handed over, when they touch every inch you offered humbly, when they get a good look at everything, your skin and bones and pulse and dust, when they realize how much this is,
how much of an earthquake and storm and tragedy you are,
it shakes them with the realization that the sun sets, and the shine isnât permanent;
thatâs when everything changes. Â
that is when the pretty words start unraveling like the peal of a tangerine and the void of what they have to offer you back
hits your spine so hard you become one with the pavement and you wonder if you could ever get back up.
and when you realize they have no strength to help you back on your feet, when the fight and courage you thought they had isnât there, they will leave you after saying something like âi canât make you happyâ and âyou will find better than meâ.
you will lie there, naked and cold and empty, and cry so hard your eyesight will be so blurry like your windshields donât work and itâs raining so much but you keep going,
hoping the storm in your eyes would convince them to
come back. come back because if not, i donât want this storm to ever end, i donât want to see if you arenât there to be seen.
you will ask why they did it. why did they come back, begging your love when they had no intention of loving you back. Â no intention of keeping your gold heart safe,
after using it up, they throw it out like an old pair of jeans, although once a favourite,
âit just didnât fit anymoreâ
like that makes all the sense in the world
and they wonât even look you in the eyes,
instead they will get angry that you are hurting.
they will try to settle the aches by telling you how much you meant to them, and how they had to give it another try just because
"itâs you. and itâs you and meâ.
they will tell you something along the lines that
itâs not your fault, they just canât love you, like their heart isnât capable
and you just want to scream because you canât understand
how a person can be so selfish that they had to manipulate you into loving them, only so they can experience a person with a heart likes yours, loving them. Â how they admired your gold so much, they risked shattering it by taking it out of the safest place it can be placed in, knowing their body is a war zone. How their curiosity was more important than your togetherness. You wonder how selfish and hard a person must be to drink you from a shot glass they know they canât handle, and when they throw you up the day after, how they just walk away without cleaning up the mess,
you wonder how a single moment like this can make you question the significance of your existence.
and thatâs when everything changes.
and you realize it was always a game to them. Â
how they watched you sacrifice and sacrifice and
give and give. how they just watched.
one minute they are holding you in their arms, as the beauty of the moon and the wishes of the stars melt onto their chest, and they are promising you mountains and oceans,
and the next they have you bowing to their toes, as they make you into nothing but the dirt that dirties their bare feet.
thatâs when they walk away by walking over you like you are nothing but a spec of their past, something not worthy to be moved forward with. Â one moment, they want to spend the rest of their life with you, but then, the moment they feel a little bit of fear and insecurity tingling in their throat, they pretend you are choking them and run away. without even having the decency or respect to let you go with kindness. gentleness. dignity.
and this is what i learnt when i learned about people like this:
after all this. after all the pulling and pushing. the grabbing and letting go. Â the playing and carelessness. Â The apathy. the taking and taking and taking .
you are not a man because you claim to be one.
when you do not know or recognize the value of a human heart, you should not be going around collecting them, to make up for the lack of yours.
they are not prized possessions.
when you cannot take responsibility for the scars you left on the body you undressed, played with, and then abandoned,
when you constantly look for fault in others to keep your ego untouched,
when your pretty words are nothing but pretty words, keep them. Â stop spreading them around, making hearts believe you mean them, when the coward in you wonât make actions out of them.
this is what you taught me:
it is easier to spread my legs open with your bare hands, than to spread my skin open with your bare heart. Â
strength is defined by pride and how many calls you can ignore and how many messages you can dismiss,
instead of picking up that phone, being the first call, the first message to say
to the love that comes back after it was once lost-
this time, her pieces arenât being picked up. they arenât being put back together into human form so you can return back to again when itâs convenient for you.
this time, sheâs letting her pieces spread like dandelion seeds from wishes she now knows wonât come true but itâs okay-
and this, is how you lose her.
jacobvanloon
kianamaiart
izzy806
