One Heart Knows

Mon, 11/06/2017 - 23:22 -- OoviyaS

One heart is all it takes to love someone, but every day, people kill each other with their love more than their bitter hatred ever could

Like sweet, sweet coffee that burns scalding hot and sugary through my arteries, it feels like I need you more than it would ever be healthy for me

 

Why is that you would lean against me like I was a cracked and plastered over pedestal, withering away at the measure of your weight,

And yet, at the same time, you wouldn’t hesitate to toss the chisel right where the foundation was unstable, weak, and wobbly?

How was I not worthy enough to be yours - even though I was the spitting image of you, the one and only?

The one who claimed that God had given you a gift that was worth well beyond mere money.

 

My heart flowed with the dirty currency of delusion telling me that this was surely “love”

Clearly, that was the only conclusion I could discern, right?

If I was meant to crawl towards you the way a zombie wrought with the disease of deception would struggle to squirm towards a ringmaster juggling the emotions that used to fuel the corpse’s brain, then I had no choice but to follow the steps of your choreography.

As you played upon my hazy perceptions the way an uneasy pianist’s fingers dance along worn out keys, serenading their love with an elusive tune, I felt the vertigo that comes with the pendulum swing of an uncertain heart.

 

And my heart grew heavier and heavier, falling out of balance and fading into a mark of my weakness.

 

After all, you may have thrown me on stage to perform without a moment’s notice, for the whole world to view,

You, who despised dancing, singing, acting - you name it, for it was a toxin of a culture I apparently didn’t belong to,

According to you, the one who knew best, leaving me with not even a clue of what to do,

But we both knew that, no matter what, my role on that stage was a test to see the extent of how far your strings would extend, yet remain plastic and tug at my elastic thoughts.

 

It was a metamorphosis into an extension of you - you, the puppeteer, controlling the devilish marionette who chose to lead a life “astray”,

Where freedom is rife in her heart, but isolationism tells her that she must stifle her wings for now at the risk of being berated by the dedicated and compassionate ruler of the house,

The one who tolerates the crooning and crying that was all her own fault in the end because she didn’t have the prudence to heed her superior with the proper discipline

She wasn’t docile enough, wasn’t proper enough, wasn’t enough, and so that was enough to tell her that she had to step it up.

 

Responsibility entails just that, right? A black cat like me who has bestowed upon my family a lifetime of “misery” and “fakery” must reap the consequences of my “trickery”

And so a lifetime where tears soak the cheeks of people who could never put their pride aside under a thick cloak of trust and truth was perfectly fine, it was absolutely mine.

“I don’t want any trouble”, you say, as I try to take my breath away, you’ve done it all by belittling my ever changing and sprouting character,

Yes, somehow I was the one behind it all.

 

The very tragic downfall.

 

And so, I loved you, day in and day out,

Fueling the humility that would ultimately burn and char my skin, whilst also drying up the dirty river that seeped into my psyche, whispering, “this isn’t like me.”

When I wasn’t adhesive enough to keep the pages of our history bound, it was because I hadn’t prayed enough, whether you knew I had worshipped or not, and whether it even was accosted for as my place in the end.

The knife that you had drove into my brain of denying the existence of my pain was enough to drive me completely insane and made me feel utterly inane

But what was I to do? There was no need to be depressed, right? And so you said, and so I bottled it up, and let it float in the sea, a memory of the real me

 

But I hid and I hid, and I forgave and I give - I had no reason to complain, you sheltered me, through out the wind, the snow, and the rain - the power within me became a benefit of the doubt scale, where justice was always on your end, and the scale tipped over at my heart’s questioning bend.

 

Devalue me at the rate of the increase of a chest pounding currency that makes me dizzy and feel intense love when ever you would finally “see” me and hold me.

Even if it was a facade, at least I could feel the warmth that a ghost like me can only dream to perceive.

Perhaps it was wearisome trying to see me, and it was certainly toilsome trying to see you, but I loved those parts of you, the ones that you never let go, and made you you, no matter who rejected it and withdrew.

It could have been easily the other way around, you rolling the dice as I played the cards that would ultimately cut into you.

 

It seemed so effortless to get carried away in such a place, and so when you had flipped the final switch to the generator of impulses in my brain, I let the charge flow and it sparked into an overdose of pills and an emotional to and fro.

Isn’t that what you wanted? If you weren’t sure why you had brought me here in the first place, what was the difference between an emotional loss and a tangible loss at this point?

There was no room for the real me to exist without disrespecting your expectations of what made the correct me,

So let’s do it. Let’s end this game the way you’ve wanted it to conclude for so long.

 

All those times I felt powerless watching you cry and scream to God for help when he never listened to you, begging me for help and guidance for what to do.

And the moments where disrespect was the only communication that encompassed the pulse that gives a relationship life.

The seconds where our breaths had been stifled by the deafening silence of the rising temper within a husband and his wife.

The fleeting questions of why any of this ever had to have started in the first place.

 

It should have been as simple as he made it, for you to understand his authority - like a flip of the coin, a spin of a pin wheel, a press of a nuclear button - anything else, and it was a lapse of judgment on your part and a fist around your neck when you had spoken too much.

You threw his emotions around too, even as the red marks welted up around your skin, you needed to fulfill the egoism behind your righteousness, behind your cause.

How could something like that be brushed off as mere yelling? Better yet, why was it just “raising your voice” and never seen as something more? Something more vile, something more cruel.

If I didn’t get it, I was fine with that, I was terrified by the prospect of living, thinking, and loving in such a way.

 

But loving is all I know how to do, and now, I don’t know if I’m even capable of doing this too.

For after these chapters have weathered away, turned orange by the oxidation of our respiration,

Will I have really understood what it means to love the way one really should?

If I am to impart anything upon myself after this onerous journey, what will it be other than trepidation and a wavering dignity?

 

My dreams have been put on hold because I decided that, because I love you, I had to sacrifice every bit of me for you,

Missing out on self-fulfilling and honorable opportunities so as to avoid the wrath of your entrapping threats and voracious self-serving cues.

Losing a wink or two of sleep and letting my chest become inflamed like a furnace, ready to burst at the thought of self-forgiveness, even if it was warranted after all of these unnecessarily handed out dues, all so I could save you?

Forgetting about the truths behind me and the faults that bind you to my ingenuity and my childish conviction in your returning rouse.

Even self inflicting upon myself, for it was all that I really knew, and the one truth I felt would somehow allow me to repent and feel at ease and not policed by the blues.

 

At the closing of this tragedy for a fairy tale, dysfunction has always been rife, and will continue to be so long as we all live perpetually embedded to each others’ quarantines of grueling, spiteful monotony deceptively referred to as “family”.

And because I love you, I continue to protect you,

But because I love myself more, I cannot excuse your tyranny any longer, and so I have given myself the strength of what makes true love emboldened and radiant

The ability to rise above the misgivings of others, including ourselves,

To learn to stand proud and tall and realize, that the love I had been looking for,

Was within me all along.

 

This poem is about: 
Me
My family
Poetry Terms Demonstrated: 

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