your/my potential
i keep giving him chances to prove to me that
we are on the same page,
that we are citing the same sources for our definition of love.
oxford, meriam-webster, Cambridge, kamus dewan,
which is it, my love?
i thought that we were on the same page when you said
“i’m here for you.”
“let me know what you need, and i will try my best to make it happen.”
but the more i am with you
the more i can’t help but feel
maybe you are lying to me?
you make these empty promises
you leave me to use
my own time and energy to
fill the promises for you
i thought i was whole enough to be okay with your half-heartedness
but i know i’m not even 1/4 full because
of the pain in my chest that comes with
every reminder that you reject my needs.
the pain travels up to my throat that
i can’t speak and
i can’t communicate these feelings to you
any more than i have.
because
i know it is not your fault
it is mine
it is my mistake for believing that we were on the same page about love.
it is my mistake for loving the way you say it to me.
what i really think is
if this is what you think love is,
you should just hold your tongue or
tell it to someone else who feels the way you do.
it would save me the temptation from wanting to tie a knot,
not the knot of our love,
but the temptation to tie your tongue into a knot
maybe then if you cannot speak,
and if i cannot hear you,
i will finally pick myself up and leave?
but here’s the thing,
you
have told me exactly who you are :
“emotionally unavailable”
“cold hearted”
and i know that
when someone tells
you who they are
you should
believe them
i’m tired of carrying both the truth and
the weight
that is your potential.
i’ve been warned not to fall in love with potential
but yours,
it is magnetic,
and i cannot look away.
i am a sucker for the moments that
you fill the big shoes i laid out for you.
i will be there to savor those moments
and remind you
that you can taste so sweet sometimes.
maybe you aren’t as
“emotionally available”
“cold hearted” as you think you are!
maybe you are different
when you are with me, my love!
it is so beautiful,
that picture of you
i hold in the locket of my heart.
i learnt from our time together that
loving someone is more about
loving yourself than someone else.
you’re never really
in love with them,
but more of
how in love you are with
how they love you.
because
if being in love with someone was
really purely about them,
you would be in love with
the greatest people on the planet.
but you’re not..
you would never have said yes
to the only boy who looked your way
in your classroom,
or
gone on a date,
with the first guy who asked,
wouldn’t you?
and the thing is
we are looking not for the best of people,
but those who best fulfill the ideas of
what being loved should feel like to us.
and what that looks like?
that’s much more of a question,
only you can answer
what i’m wondering throughout all of this is
really,
why can’t i give
all of what i want from you
to myself?
A little background about the poem
For me, this poem is a travesty of a healthy relationship. I wrote it bearing the voice of someone who was unhappy in a relationship where needs seemed to be unmet and one party must overcompensate for the other. In any healthy relationship, if a partner is not meeting the other’s needs, it can quickly become toxic. I think I want to call it a travesty, because the voice makes a demand for a healthy relationship, where the voice feels that they are holding up their end while the partner is not. But it is a travesty because it assumes the voice’s needs are reasonable. In truth, the voice’s needs stem from a position of deep insecurity and are therefore, unrealistic. They cannot be met by any human on this planet. This poem for me, is more about how the voice navigates the realistic boundaries of a relationship within this context, where the voice finally learns that the relationship that really needs to be amended is not that with their partner’s, but their relationship with themselves.
