Tomb of silence
I learned the tomb of silence early
How to swallow myself
into silent
morsels
of a human
To not awake
the sleeping giant
That love was
loud and scary
To protect
myself from
it,
was to be invisible
To live in fear
Yet
to always
expect love,
to show up on time
To know
I could always depend on love
to defend me from harm
while being
simultaneously harmful
I knew love was:
to mature faster
in the depths
of seeing
fallen gods as prey
Love held my hand across the street and showed up to my plays
Amor couldn’t always
show up but picked me up
if I forgot my homework
Amor drank too many times
and swallowed herself
into an abyss that
numbed the pain
Love angrily wished me
to be different
Free of titles,
free of belonging to a man,
free of belonging to society
Love taught me that it, too,
ends even when
the feelings haven’t
That someone else
can pretend to fill
That space and manipulate it
into a recurring nightmare
Love is
reciprocated in dysfunction
unlike fairytales
It takes sickness and loss of health
to remember broken vows
I was taught to see myself as beautiful; capable of anything
yet somehow I missed
internally flowing of my own love
I met love
with teary intimidation
Until those droplets
no longer
solved anything
Living in dried up pupils
Following the path
most traveled
looking externally
into emptier vessels
And seeing
myself
