Oh darling, the warmth of lightning on your skin in the wintertime feels comforting, doesn't it? I know you are still learning what it is for a heart to beat but handing him yours is not the way.
I know normality tastes like sunshine and grey looks more like blue when his face is lighting up like the dawn, but home is not every building with a welcome mat at the door.
You're still falling at his feet as if love is something that has to hurt because 'unrequited' is the kind of bittersweet song you sing yourself to sleep with every night.
Darling, you are allowed to get drunk off his laughter and high off his attention. (After all, how could you stop yourself?) You are allowed to turn him into words and sonnets and tearing skin. You are allowed to paint a constellation of 'what if's in your mind and become addicted to watching them grow. You are allowed a small magic. You are allowed to love him.
But the bed you have made for yourself is not one where he can lie beside you with crumpled sheets, sleepy smiles and sunlit skin. You are not allowed to cup his face in your hands or cradle his soul in your arms. You are not allowed to pour out confessions like fine wine or kiss him goodnight as dusk slips away. You are allowed a small magic but not every magic. Not the kind you crave the most.
You are allowed to love him but you are not allowed to have him.
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Please check out some of my other poems like this one and the one below:
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$#*£ Resilience
I was going to relax this evening. Tune out, hunker down, look after myself. I need it. I am exhausted. Thoroughly used up. And it's only Wednesday. Not even half way through the week. A week that in the UK, is Mental Health Awareness week. I don't know who decides these things, who gets to co-opt a day, a week, a month, and declare it a thing about a thing. But I do know a lot about mental health. I know a lot about mental health AND I know a lot about working for the UK's National Health Service. And so it was with interest that I clicked play on the below video, earlier today. By the time I finished, I was in tears.
By Hannah Moore4 days ago in Psyche
Comments (2)
"You are allowed to turn him into words and sonnets and tearing skin. You are allowed to paint a constellation of 'what if's in your mind and become addicted to watching them grow. You are allowed a small magic. You are allowed to love him." Oh my goodness, Poppy. This is one of my favorites of yours, I think, but I'm sure I've said that a bunch of times. This stanza to the ending is just pure mastery. You never disappoint with the depth of emotion in your writing, the metaphors that crush the reader with their sparkling angles and deceptive weight. WOW.
"You are allowed to paint a constellation of 'what if's in your mind and become addicted to watching them grow." Such beautiful allowances, and then the gut-wrenching ending. Gorgeous and heartbreaking 💔