Our Summer : My Truth

{90} You Told Me

You told me to smile

You told me the wisdom is in my eyes

You told me it's only a mile 

You told me to focus on the prize

You told me I'll never see you on trial

You told me a winner never dies

You told me that happiness was out of style

You told me over and over a bunch of lies

But this pain I can no longer disguise

You and me are the same, 

we breathe, we bleed 

we fight, we lead 

And so I fight, to forget you and to leave my demons behind.

***

First I hope all of you are okay. I hope that you have enough food, you are not worrying about the economy and that you have been trying to enjoy all this time you have. I hope you are also in the best of health!

Now let me also say that this was totally suppose to be a happy poem to cheer up your spirits but then I just kept writing and this was created. Because of this I am gonna dissect my writing a little bit to help explain how this came to me. This is no way me judging this poem or saying it isn't my best work because besides, The Bubble I think this is one of my favorite poems that I have written recently. 

A poet's explanation:

The first line is in reference to this idea that women should smile at all time. 

"The wisdom is in my eyes" refers to the sexist belief that some people still have to this day that women should be seen and not heard. 

"It's only a mile" refers to the notion of how we minimize the pain of others. For example, a man may just have gotten stabbed and someone might say to him "It's only a flesh wound", but that's irrelevant because flesh wound or not, he is still in pain. 

The next line of "focus on the prize" refers to capitalism and how much we're told to endure so much physical and mental pain all for some end result that essentially only benefits a few. Sometimes we forget to live in the process of trying to accomplish some goal and we have to remember we only get one life. Don't waste it. 

The next two are pretty self explanatory. People who do crimes think they're above the law and we would all like the believe that even if we are physically dead, if we won the battle, we are still alive. The battle is different for everyone as we all have different demons. 

Many people have come to reject this idea that to live you have to be happy and have turned it into if you are really living you've got to be doing something successful. Even social media culture makes it seems as if "happiness is out of style."

For people in pain, there are so many lies you have been told. Like if you've been abused, I'm sure your abuser has tried to victim blame you. If you have cancer I am sure someone has told you that your optimism is ridiculous. But we are fighters, you and I and we can accomplish anything. 

I hope that makes it clear that in NO way shape or form am I encouraging abuse or saying people who do evil are equal to those they harm. I hope you like the poem. 

~ Have you ever baked yourself something from scratch?

Do it. You have time lol!

Love you to the moon and back,

D.O.