I allowed my lover to suffer for the sins of another.
My defences rendered senseless in the heat of each moment.
Patience wavering each second even though all she wanted was a tree that could provide the proper shade, and my tree of curls only fiercely burned with foolishness.
Always defensive because I was prepared to battle every second.
I brought tools from another world to use in this world, two different worlds completely.
I have a lot of wishes. None of which can really be fulfilled.
My love is oftentimes described as a weather system, natural disasters are common, but surviving it can develop a certain strength and also a resistance that makes it harder to keep fighting, they ware you down eventually wearing your name with difficulty.
I finally told my mom why she has not heard from A in a long time, mentioned that I blocked her and my mom rightfully said that I am stupid. I agree.
After all that I have thrown onto her, I do not believe that it would be right for me to try to make amends.
The amount of hurricanes that she has had to weather from me, I have no clue why she would want to hear my attempt at apologizing.
So. I write here like a coward hoping to shield myself from a storm I brought upon myself. Okay. Now the poem starts.
I keep trying to turn guilt into virtue,
as if self-removal is the same as respect,
as if disappearing is a clean apology.
But it is still control.
It is still me deciding the ending
and calling it mercy.
I do not trust my hands
when they reach for tenderness.
I reach like a fist
and then wonder why everyone flinches.
My body learned defence
before it learned language.
My mouth learned to sharpen
before it learned to soothe.
I live like every door is about to slam,
like love is a raid,
like laughter is a trick light
that will expose me.
So I stockpile storms.
I hoard thunder.
I bring armour into a bedroom
and then ask why the sheets feel like battle flags.
She wanted shade.
Not a sermon.
Not a warning.
Not a weather report.
Just shade.
And I could not do it.
Because I mistook shade for surrender.
I mistook calm for weakness.
I mistook her quiet needs
for an accusation.
So I burned.
Not bright.
Not beautiful.
Just hot.
Just loud.
Just impossible to sit beside
without losing skin.
Sometimes I think my love is not love.
It is an evacuation order
delivered with flowers.
Sometimes I think I am generous
only in the ways that keep me safe,
only in the ways that still place me
at the centre of the room.
Because if I am the storm
I do not have to feel
how small I am underneath it.
Cowardice is not only hiding.
Cowardice is pre-emptive damage.
It is striking first
so you do not have to be struck.
It is calling it honesty
when really it is panic
with good diction.
I told my mother the truth
and she gave it a simpler name.
Stupid.
A clean word.
A hard slap of a word.
A word that does not let me dress my wound
in poetry and principle.
And I agreed,
because agreement is easy
when it does not require repair.
Blocking her was not a boundary.
It was a barricade.
Not to keep her out,
but to keep my shame in,
so it could keep fermenting
into something I could call fate.
I say I should not make amends
like it is noble.
Like it is protecting her
from the hazard of my mouth.
But what I am really saying is:
I cannot bear to be seen
trying.
Trying is exposure.
Trying means I might fail
in a way that cannot be romanticised.
Trying means I cannot weaponise regret
to keep distance between my ribs
and what I did.
I have so many wishes.
I stack them like sandbags
against the flood.
I ask them to hold back consequences.
They dissolve.
Every time.
I wish I was the kind of person
whose apologies do not sound
like an argument.
I wish softness did not feel
like walking barefoot
through a room full of glass
that I placed there myself.
I wish my love did not arrive
with sirens.
I wish it did not come
with a forecast and a warning label.
Because she did not ask for strength.
She did not ask to become resilient.
She did not ask to earn a medal
for surviving me.
She asked for shade.
And I gave her weather.
I watch myself from a distance
like a man watching a coastline
pretend it is surprised
by the sea.
I know my patterns.
I know the spiral.
I know how I turn care into crisis,
how I turn closeness into suffocation,
how I turn love into a test
that no one agreed to take.
And the worst part is
I can name it
and still do it.
I can describe the hurricane
while I am still feeding it.
I can apologise in advance
and still break the window.
I act like my damage is weather,
natural, inevitable,
something no one can blame me for.
But I am not a sky.
I am a person.
A person choosing pressure,
choosing heat,
choosing the familiar violence
of defence
over the unfamiliar courage
of peace.
That is the cowardice.
Not that I write here.
Not that I admit it.
The cowardice is that I keep mistaking
punishment for accountability,
distance for growth,
silence for love.
And I keep calling it fate
so I do not have to call it me.
I make it hard for people to stay in love with me, a reflection of how I feel about myself, I get tired of me and start to find every reason so hate me, and eventually anybody around me receives the same treatment.
*original Poem*
I keep calling it weather
as if that makes it neutral,
as if naming myself a force of nature
lets me escape responsibility.
But storms choose paths.
They learn terrain.
They return to the same coast
because they remember where they were fed.
I say I was built for battle
and forget to ask
who I kept mistaking for the enemy.
I arrived armed with instincts
for a world that never ended,
swinging shields where there were open hands,
reading love as an ambush.
She asked for shade.
Not shelter.
Not escape.
Just a place where the sun would stop proving a point.
And I offered heat.
Brilliance without mercy.
Roots tangled so tightly around themselves
they strangled anything that tried to rest beneath them.
I confuse intensity with devotion.
Noise with truth.
Urgency with care.
I make my feelings urgent
so no one can examine them closely.
I call it honesty
when it is really overflow.
I call it passion
when it is really fear moving too fast
to be recognised.
I keep saying I brought the wrong tools
but I chose them.
I polished them.
I trusted them more than I trusted her silence.
I trusted my damage
because it was familiar.
Blocking her was not strength.
It was preemptive grief.
It was me finishing the sentence
before she could.
My mother called it stupid
because love is obvious from the outside.
Because storms look smaller
once you step out of their centre.
I do not seek forgiveness here.
This is not a letter.
This is a weather report
written after the town is gone.
I am not misunderstood.
I am understood too late
by myself.
I write because writing does not leave.
Because the page does not flinch.
Because the page has no nervous system
to bruise.
This is not me asking to be spared.
This is me admitting
that I sharpen the very things
that cut the closest.
I turn self loathing into a discipline
and then practise it on anyone who stays.
