Love and All It's Done to Me

Dark skin and a little weed

I loved you before I allowed you inside of me. Before I knew how bad it would hurt when you chose her. Before I cried on the shower floor with the blood of our child surrounding me at 17 years old. Before I had to go to school the next day and you walked past me like I was nothing. Like our daughter wouldn't have been beautiful. Like our son wouldn't have have had your eyes and my smile.
I loved you before I allowed you access to me.
It took me four months before I mourned for our loss. I mourned for the both of us while you flaunted her around like a buttermilk trophy you couldn't wait to take home. As if my purple undertones didn't match your blue ones. Didn't match the bruises of my Jamaican ancestors and your Liberian ones, like we wouldn't have made magic with our love... like we did in January.
My year began with moonlight love.
A midnight son grew inside of me, and within a week I was cursing the moon for leaving me; within a month I was cursing the heavens for taking us away from me.
Then a year later, you came back
only after she left, you came back
and I loved you so much I was willing to be her shadow
Following after her until you removed that part of your rib and made space for me
Until her name didn't mean shit...
Until my love for you registered and was reciprocated
Until I could tell you how much it hurt when you left
Until you could understand that her love for you couldn't hold a candle to mine
Until you could see that I didn't need your money, or your sex, or Waffle House. My nigga I needed you
I needed you to lay with me
To look at me with clothes on the same way you do when hers are off
To just be with me, in every way imaginable
But I guess I was asking too much.
Those around you never gave you the tools on how to love minimally, never showed you that love doesn't have a price tag. That loyalty doesn't come in a Gucci store. That not everybody wants something from you. That YOU are enough.
I'm sorry they took that from you
I'm sorry what was in between my thighs couldn't convince you
I'm sorry my conversation couldn't compel you
And I'm sorry for confusing lust for love
For expecting everything from you when you had nothing for me
For wanting to be everything to you when there was no place for me
There was no room,
No drawer to unpack my thoughts, or a corner to set my shoes
The only time my mouth or what came out of it was appealing to you was when my tongue rolled around your tip and my name fell of your lips
in a whisper of moans and groans and I knew she couldn't do this shit
To you.
I'm sorry for trying to build you a home on sand knowing
It will never stand
to see the light of day or how beautiful you look in the moonlight
How all it took was a tide of text messages for us to be forgotten
For me to be thrown aside like what we did together didn't matter
Nigga fuck the sex we was intimate
Showed each other the faces behind the facade we put up daily to just be
here... on this earth
surviving.
But I hope she loves you right this time. I hope that every argument and tear shed brought you both closer than ever. I hope that I helped her value you more and vice versa.
I just needed my pain to mean something
I need to know that the scars on my heart weren't in vain. That I wasn't your cure for the amnesia you got behind loving her
That you are happy and in love, even if not with me
Even if we don't speak
Even if I can't bare to look you in the eye anymore. I need to know that she was worth losing me.