Stranguhhh

Friendship Red Flags

1. If they isolate you from others 🔺️

2. If they undermine your other friends 🔺️

3. If they only speak negative of the crowd 🔺️

4. They say "I have never met someone like you" 🔺️

5. They force you to revert their words, eg: 'best friends' 🔺️

6. They emotional blackmail 🔺️

7. Narcissistic 🔺️

8. Attention-seekers 🔺️

9. "I am better than everyone" pride 🔺️

But to I, who am I?

You don't hold a mirror,

But tinted lenses I say:

Flipping my countenance

To suit your ways;

You manufacture the me

I should have made.

I am split and stretched

From two ends —

What I am and what I ought to be.

My voice is yours,

My thoughts are thine,

I seek a self

That is wholly mine.

I'm weak, I'm frail

I must capitulate —

No! No! That's what you say.

I'm bossy, I'm rude,

Unladylike — Oh, so crude!

No! No! That's you again,

Echoing in my brain.

Reflections of me I search for;

In this gendered world,

Where shall I find the mirror?

I close my eyes

And embrace my worth,

For that is where the truth lies.

I'm a dreamer,

I am an achiever,

I'm passionate, strong and wise

My interests, my traits

Are not masculine

Or feminine,

They make up what I am —

They're simply what I like.

So close your eyes, my compeers,

Only thence you'll wake:

What you see is a man's world,

Within you is the femme great.

We are much more than they can be

And we can be everything they are.

We are women, we are humans,

We are an existence, capable and worthy,

Equally

Neither am I -

I see your flaws.

I know who you are:

You're human,

Beautiful,

Loving and caring.

I'm not blind

To your negatives;

I witness them daily.

I witness and smile

"Gosh! This imperfect human is mine!"

He is everything I dreamt

Everything I yearned

You're perfect

I'm perfect

The beauty that you are

Oh sky!

Boundless, deep, twinkling, dark,

I try to trap this anxiety serene;

None could hold the I way I do

The way I do with eyes.

Oh! I could fall and break to two

Break to two on this floor

But none to share this hue.

Orion, you, the guardian,

Impressed upon the sky seamless,

Witness the cries of the city;

You listen not the clank and clamour,

Nor the buzz and blare and glamour-

You witness the soul

Atop some roof glaring,

Deaf amid the city shimmers,

The horizon, a curve now

Reaches the fire; in water,

With sizzled core

The engulfed quivers.

The sphere of spirit flickers,

The air around gasps,

The vision bubbles and bursts,