By Brittany Watts-Hendrix
I have stopped worrying
about how to come to bed,
– fully clothed or ugly naked –
because you always mock me.
Like the time I brought a mirror to you,
and you put paint all over it, made funny faces.
I rarely laugh when you dare me
to take myself less serious:
I’ve never thought you the funny type.
When I read that hope flutters,
I was glad to meet you.
Glader when you decided I was worthy
enough to stick around with.
Since then, I wonder
if together we’ll save the world,
or if I’ll just use you
to figure out what I can’t say to myself.
Though, I’d never use you to pass time.
You never lend yourself to be wasted.
I suppose you’re like a tree:
Standing, without moving, and growing
too slow for anyone to see, and the process
of you offering breath goes invisible and
unappreciated. I’ve always thought you were
worthy of having an award show of your own.
I wonder how
genuine is your humbleness.
Are you really pissed when people talk
about your family and leave you out?
When you become an afterthought?
When you rage, it’s so simple
for people to not listen.
Where does your confidence stem from
that you continue as you are
unheard, unseen?
When we brush our souls against each other,
I think to myself if you were born to be
for another time. If we are gonna go
back and forth for a lifetime, I need to know
every now and then you’ll give me pleasure
that I confuse with God’s return,
at the exact moment they insert a chip in my brain.
What use will you be when paper is valued less
than you already are? How will we have nights
when you hold me and absorb my tears
and read back to me how I’ve grown
in such a short time? and how long it has been
that you sit near me and say nothing.
Why is it that when I ask you a question
there is a whole ‘nother level of bullshit?
When I ask if you love me, just say yes.
I don’t need you to compare me to no days,
or talk about death or oceans or religion,
if ever you do. When you are straight with me
I know I beg again for the chase, the run around.
You never submit to me though. When you do,
you lie there and look terrible.
And when I ask you why you have to be
so difficult, you say to me that you are
just surviving, a way of happening, a mouth
that is sometimes full of my favorite food
and sometimes dry and sometimes just.