Love Letters, Part 1 [9-08-09]

Love letters, part 1.

This is the last love letter I will write to you.
I will write only of the good times we knew
In the place known only as Before
When we wrote songs and dreams to power us through life
all the while, I told my friends I would never date a girl
because I know how fucked up I am
and it gets too complicated too quickly--
boys may only want one thing but at least they let you in on the secret.
Instead love went around my objections and slipped the floor from beneath my feet
and I fell hard (as cynics do)
living in poorly veiled adoration of you
until that kiss

the kiss that made you mine.

Allow us to operate, for a time,
under the misconception that all the magic in our eyes will last forever
and that your flaws will only ever charm me
and that the scars on your arms are borne of stairwells and invisible cats.
Let me fantasize for a moment that your peculiar brand of loyalty
is the truest love I've ever known
and all the troubles of your life
can be kissed away by my healing lips;
Let me brag that I am your knight in shining armor
I am your benevolent phantom
Until my skin has bonded with the costume
And I can only watch myself be crushed under foes I never had the right to challenge.

I will try
to keep
all of the bad memories
from decieving me
into thinking there is nothing good to remember
because there must have been something good in us,
moments where we smiled and our hearts were at ease;
days when I could remember the last time I left your house
and you weren't crying
and I didn't slam the door
and stalk home with fists clenched,
hating myself for not being more sensitive
not somehow predicting your problems
not saying all the right things
and hating you for proving me powerless once again.
There must have been
moments
somewhere
when my backbone was not dissolved by tears and requests
even you acknowledged as ridiculous,
but made pinnacles of our relationship anyway;
seconds where I didn't fuel your psychosis
every day becoming a goddamn enabler
(as if you needed encouraging.)
Days when it was easier to think of it as a date instead of a pity party.
I can still see your weeping face clear as day:
big, tortured puppy eyes
snot running over your lips--
an ugly display for attention I misinterpreted as trust--
hands raking through straw hair
mouth shrieking at unseen demons
this side of you shown at any sign of distress
(or of boredom)
this face more familiar to me
than the smiles I keep in pictures of you.

I am trying very hard, little girl,
to remember you as my darling
but the more I remember
the less I can stand myself for turning my instincts on themselves,
thinking I was pushing you away
instead of establishing boundaries.
Thinking you could live beyond the destructive love of your mother
and forgetting from whom I learned how to love.
I would turn from your actions to the words we wove together, but
The songs and dreams we wrote
you gave edge and pressed against my throat,
as if I were destroying you
while your cell bars burned lines into my back.
You managed to twist love letters into bitter reminders to which
I can only recoil in anger
And as much as I would rather reminisce on your handiwork,
all you ever made were chains
and there is nothing to celebrate in that.

Take some comfort in the fact
that all of my best poetry is of you.
I wonder if I will ever stop writing you these love letters.

---

Pnelma's Pen