A Poem of Cautious Optimism, A Poem of Indifference, and a Poem of Love

After the last time I posted a poem on this blog my dad called me and said he had no idea that i wrote poetry. Which seemed crazy to me, but it did make it crystal clear that my parents never tried to sneak a look at any of my 100's of notebooks when I was in high school. Which was comforting, honestly, because most of what I wrote in high school is not anything I'd want to share with anyone.

I still feel more then a little nervous when I share a poem. They feel more personal then normal blog posts, somehow, which I understand is ridiculous, since I've blogged about some weighty topics. 

Today felt like an emotional day, so I decided to share some more emotional writing. These are three poems. One and a half I wrote almost a year ago. One and half i wrote today. Maybe you'll be able to tell which are which. 

I used to think that putting people down on paper would get them out of my head. I thought that if I could dissolve people into metaphors and memories I wouldn’t have to deal with their actualities.

I was wrong. Turning people in to poems doesn’t make them disappear; it grants them an artistic kind of immortality.

Which is why I’ve said a hundred times that I was done writing poems about people who didn’t make me happy, and in doing so told myself a hundred lies.

I keep making myself promises that I’ll focus on the happy moments and the people who make the days seem too short, instead of the days that feel too dark and the people who when I’m with them make me feel more alone.

Putting my hope in people is the surest way for my hope to break. I trust too easy and fall too fast and let myself get wrapped up in moments that don’t deserve to be thought about in the ways that I think of them.

But this is it. This is saying no and starting over with blank notebooks waiting to be filled with looping cursive that no one else can read and word documents with the blinking line waiting for me to fill the white with words about the things I want to say and the people I want to hold on to.

It’s not that I don’t want to remember, it’s just that i want to forget. I want to live in the middle of the contradiction and be ok with the way things end up and to allow the things I create to reflect the highs and the lows, but mostly the highs because I want to remember them most all. 

When I think back on our time together now, it plays out behind my eyes like a movie on a silver screen, with a cast of seasoned pros who are so good at playing 17 and scared.

When I think back on the night we sat on top the picnic table and you sang me a song you wrote about the color of my eyes, I think I’m supposed to feel nostalgic, but mostly I don’t feel anything at all.

Seventeen feels like forever ago. It feels like bad decisions and good memories and staying up too late whispering on the phone so my parents wouldn’t hear. It feels like sitting in the passenger seat ignoring your dumb radio stations and watching the way your sunglasses slipped just to the edge of your nose. It feels like another person felt all of those things about you, and about myself. It feels like a life I barely remember, even though it’s one I lived.

 I think I like not having to feel our memories so deeply. It’s freeing and forceful, and twists my mind to conjure happier times and uglier times and things that didn’t seem so commonplace. Letting go means opening my hands to new things to carry and my heart to new experiences to come. Moving past means open highways and chances for road-trips full of detours to places I can’t even imagine yet, and songs that will remind me of someone that I haven’t yet met.

I love you because I don’t know how not to. It’s not a choice, it’s not a decision, it’s me existing and you existing and that being enough. I love you because your smile makes me smile, and the way you wink makes me laugh, and the sound of your voice reminds me of luxuriating in days like we would never run out of them.

I used to think that love was for stories. For princess and princes, girls whose hair shone bright and boys who’s eyes glinted with mystery. Love was for people who lived exciting lives and did exciting things, and inspired tales and legends and myths and dreams. Love is more simple than that.

Love is an everyday kind of magic. It’s a spell without an incantation, a trick that must be seen to be believed.

I’m not silly, I exist more in practicality, but love can make anyone dissolve to the bits of who they claim to be. Love can show every piece of you if you let it. And you should. Opening myself up to you taught me a lot about who I am. It allowed me to see myself through someone else’s eyes. You seeing me as beautiful helped me believe that I was beautiful. You seeing me as kind helped me believe that I was kind.

I love you because I don’t know how not to. It’s not a decision, it’s not a choice, it’s you existing and me existing, and that being more than enough.