What If He Loves Her The Way He Refused To Love Me?

My name is I LOVE YOU and all of this is so new and bright. How lovely it is to have you, sunshine, after all this rain! Heaven lies at your feet and the sunrise breaks in your eyes. You are hot flashes and lightning. How the warmth in your palms cuts down my mountain of empty. How I call this love. How I call this wanting. 

My name is HOT, my name is SEXY, my name is I-REALLY-WANT-FUCK-YOU and that’s a compliment, right? You wrap your arms around my waist and murmur it under your breath. I let your maggot-filled observations wriggle into the blackening wound in my chest. Call it healing, call it medicine, and call it I’m-going-to-be-okay. My name is GIRLFRIEND now, my name is SWEETNESS, and my name is PERFECT. 

My name is BABY and I am lying on the floor. The pain, the bloodstains and the harsh light, your body over mine and my name is NO. My name is STOP. My name is PLEASE SLOW DOWN. My name is I JUST WANTED A HUG. I am a shell of whatever I used to be- nothing more, nothing less. Let this be a funeral for whatever innocence I had left. Let this be my goodbye, my I-swear-I’ll-be-fine. 

My name is blood and pain and baby-let’s-never-talk-about-this-again.

My name is N****. My name is BLACK. My name is AFRICAN and I flinch at your awful words. Your father will never know my name, and your mother will never judge me over dinner. I am dirt. I will never be your perfect, goodly, godly girl. I am too brown to really mean anything. There are no riches here. Nothing grows here. The earth is hungry here. 

My name is DAMAGED GOODS and I wonder how you could ever love a girl like me. You say it over the phone, your tongue lashing from between your teeth. I listen for the love in your voice like a paramedic listens for breath. I hear nothing. It is dead. My name is UNLOVABLE. My name is WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO DO THIS. All that blood pumping and rushing in my veins are only my own. 

My name is I AM SORRY. All those apologies spill over the floor like an overturned drink. You watch me clean it all up, Mary Magdalene at your feet. Retribution for whatever sin I take on next. 

My name is CRAZY. Everything is my fault and none of it is yours. I agree, my lungs bloodletting as I wonder how you are so perfect. I betrayed my own body, my own soul for this and for you. Lover, call this a suicide. Watch how I gag on all this blame, and choke. Watch me and grin. My name is GOOD GIRL. My name is I FORGIVE YOU. My name is OBEDIENCE. My name is I LOVE YOU LIKE THIS.

I learn to be frightened of you like plants learn to be frightened of gravel. My name is STUPID and WOMEN LIKE YOU NEVER KNOW YOUR PLACE. My name is SHUT UP. My name is DECLINED CALLS. My name is I DON’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE. 

My name is IT WILL GET BETTER but I face the wall with my music turned up high, the rotting memories crawling up my throat like spiders. I still see you in the corner of my eye. 

My name is ___________________________________

I can’t remember who I was before this

I can’t remember who I was before you.

turning lonely into angry and angry into occupied was a coping mechanism for so long for me. I mean, what else was I supposed to do with all this empty space inside me, hollowed from the inside out by my own mind? I tried to lobotomise myself, tried to extract all the bad like a field doctor without supplies on the battlefield: improvising, desperate, bloody- willing to do anything to just make it stop.

What is the word for a building that is on fire and that building is ruined and gone and everyone else can feel the effects of the smoke and the heat and that building is not a building but a person and that person is the i in my poetry, except it’s my real body that aches. The depression was physical just as much as it was mental.

All that destruction, pain, all the hollowness my illness brought. The “I can’t sleep but I’m so fucking tired”, “I can’t come into school today because the world scares me and I haven’t showered in weeks” and “I’m so sad and so numb” and “im sorry I have to cancel on you but I just can’t face the day”. I felt like I hurt people more than I hurt myself.

It’s hard to forget that part of my life, sometimes it feels like all the darkness never left. It still creeps on me, on days where I’m too tired or haven’t eaten. And I still write about it in the present tense. It’s still here. still here.

I love the fact that you need to lean on me, a boy says. 

He loved my vulnerability and how big I made him feel, 

But would get annoyed if I’d call him in the midst of another anxiety attack, 

Begging to know if he still loved me,

 if he still wanted me.

He called me his broken little thing. 

Wrote a play and in it I stabbed myself with a blade.

I would write him a suicide note thanking him for his bravery and his charm.

He finds me on the floor, cries over me and goes on to be a doctor, 

It’s only now that I realise he never loved me. 

He just loved the control.

we found a park bench that fit us perfectly, with our initials etched into it. no kidding. seems like the universe foretold our love before we even knew it existed. and it sounds stupid but what are the chances? anyway, one always tends to romanticise everyday objects when in love.

and it’s beautiful, the way the love I have for you rises and bubbles in my throat, tainting everything with its sweetness. the way that park bench isn’t the same if you’re not there. the way that river by your place reminds me of your whirlpool blue eyes. the way wok noodles don’t taste as good if we’re not eating it together, laughing and sharing the same fork.

in summer, we buy milkshakes and listen to music, lying on each other on the bench. in winter, we cuddle into his big jacket, shivering and sharing a cup of overpriced hot chocolate. a park bench that weathered storms and lifetimes and hundreds of strangers, etched with our love from before we even met. before I fell in love with you. before you first kissed me.

crazy, huh?

my lover used to blush and shake his head in disagreement whenever I called him handsome. emerald green eyes rolling and skin flushed in embarrassment. I could tell he didn’t quite believe me.

now, 6 months on, whenever I call him handsome he kisses my cheek and smiles. says, thank you, says I love you and squeezes me tight.

we roll around on the carpet floor, hugging each other tightly, pulling each other ever closer. we try to stay quiet, but whispers of “I missed you so much” spoken in the language of pleasure escape. we giggle at the intimacy of it all, two lovers ready to throw themselves off the brink of everything to stay in this dream.

the way your body melts into mine, like you belong here, like we were made for this moment. we hug and laugh and kiss and say “goodbye, lover, I’ll see you later!” and never worry. we help each other with our work and plan for a future full of sunflowers and paintings and dinner by the fireplace. we’re still arguing if we should get a dog or a cat, though. that playful love.

how my words slip from my loose gloved jaw whenever ur around. how I lie on your chest and hear ur heartbeat quicken like you still get shy when I come close. how you stumbled into my life and made a beautiful mess of my mind.

wouldn’t trade you for the world, my summertime boy, wouldn’t give you away for anything. and when we roll around the carpet floor, breathless and wistful and entangled, I’m reminded why loving you is so easy.

when I tell you that you make me feel safe, it means something. I’m saying that you make me feel like a flower in a garden and I’ve spent my whole life feeling like a weed growing out of concrete. I’m saying that I love you so much that I’ll let you witness my wounds up close, under the harsh light. exposed, raw...but isn’t love being vulnerable in front of you and knowing that you still love me. you still love me. you still love me. wounds, flaws and all.