Poppy’s Writing

I may not be living for myself,

For I am simply

An empty vase, full of dead seeds

From seasons past,

But 

At least I’m alive.

You have deemed me important,

Even if it’s just what’s left of me. 

I can’t promise I’ll pick up the phone 

The next time it rings,

But I’ll at least acknowledge 

I can see the beauty in you.

Regardless of the cracks in the soul beneath.

The beauty lies in the small things,

The way your face may clench as you focus,

or the life behind your eyes as your mind

 drifts into the clouds of possibility.

The way you spark like electricity 

when you speak.

There’s beauty in the grey days,

depth behind each moment.

Can you see the beauty, too?

I know I loved you then.

But I am not that version of me,

and you are not that version of you.

we are new,

my Love for you is old.

We do not have room for outdated love.

So,

old is reborn,

Through seeds I left behind.

My Love for you

is borne of something new. 

The sea always terrified me.

With its many unknowns.

This time,

I am terrified of what I know.

You are scarier than the sea, and yet

I went swimming anyways.

The sea no longer scares me,

Because I have seen all the horrors possible to man,

All in the depths of you.

Your character is worth drowning to escape from.

The monsters I thought were in the depths of the sea,

Instead lie in you.

I would face the deep sea

if it meant being far away from you.

My Mind is a liar,

and my Heart is a known crier.

You have no obligation to me.

you do not have to love me.

however, my love,

please do.

My soul waited forever for you to join her again.

Forever

for you to find yourself,

 and to find her.

Centuries of misses,

Almost kisses.

But we weren’t ready yet.

We weren’t ready to collide,

not quite yet.

and in a half,

we joined again.

romantic paintings at dawn,

slow dancing in the morning light,

touches that are slight.

forever and a half down,

forever and a half to go.

Oh, how I admire you,

I find it hard to be anyone else when I look in your eyes.

Even my laugh cannot be disguised.

Through and through,

How can i possibly be enough for you?

But I do not care about my worries,

You still stroked my cheek,

Held my body close,

Even when the night shone bright.

I don’t know how to love someone.

If it’s taught, 

I must have missed the lesson.

I don’t know how to love you.

I only know how to argue,

How to make you disgusted with me,

To make you see me as a cruel soul.

But how do I say I never want to hurt you?

How I never want to be the cause of your tears?

How do I say that I want to be the reason 

You feel your heart skip a beat?

I want to love you. 

Let me love you.

My mind is full of them-

Scribbles going from one place to the other,

Muddling all my thoughts.

They keep me up at night,

The thoughts.

My sentences go unsaid,

Because the thought stopped.

Much like the end of a line drawn in crayon,

Like a child was drawing all over my brain.

I’ve tried to keep it neat. 

Sane.

But it never lasts long.

I tried to create art with my thoughts,

But there’s no beauty

How can I live in a world where I’ll never be enough?

I’m sitting here with the pills in front of me,

Trying to think of a reason to stay.

My absence is one that will go unnoticed.

That seat in math class would be filled eventually, 

The clothes I wear given to someone who needs it,

My jokes made by someone else.

My presence doesn’t impact your life,

So how would my absence?

There’s nothing I can do that will please you,

So why don’t I do something for me?

Ease my raging mind

You ask me 

“Are we friends?”

How can we be friends when you’ve betrayed my trust?

Put my hands in places I didn’t want them to go,

Whispered things in my ear I wish I could forget.

“He’s got quite pretty eyes you know, why don’t you like him?”

It’s hard to find his eyes pretty, Mother, when they stare into yours

While ignoring your begs,

while closing the door to your room,

His basement,

His room,

Those same eyes telling you to stay quiet,

Even when you don’t realize what’s going on yet.

I was too young to know.

It’s hard to like him when your bed

Held his body,

And you sleep on the floor because his scent lingers in your nose,

And in your mind.

His scent lingers sometimes, and I can’t sleep,

Even hundreds of miles away, on new sheets.

We’re not friends. 

I doubt that we ever were,

It’s hard not knowing

What you are.

When there’s some who claim you belong with them,

And there’s some who say

We’re our own classification.

Our own community.

All I do know is

If I can’t hear the sand crunch,

The birds chirping,

Or the melodic piano of my favourite song

In a few years’ time,

I won’t belong anywhere I do now.

It’s a community I’ve never been allowed in

Never met another like me,

Hard of hearing,

Never met someone who struggles with identity-

At least not like this.

Never met someone who struggles

With hearing,

The thing we’re meant to be able to do from birth.

Such a simple thing,

But I’ve never been able to accept it.

How do I call myself disabled

When I still have ability?

Can I even call myself that?

I wasn’t raised in a community,

One prided by differences, joined by hard times,

I was raised by lonely thoughts.

Isolated by my differences.

How do I feel pride for something I don’t have?

How do I look at that hearing aid

With anything except questions?

[something about me being HOH]

“Love doesn’t exist” I told myself,

And if it does, it’s not for your taking.

“You can’t just go around asking people to love you,”

I told myself- not when you don’t deserve it.

I repeated the hate over and over again,

Until my very soul disappeared.

The face I saw when I looked back in the mirror

Was disgusting.

I compared myself beyond repair.

I stopped looking in the mirror.

Months later,

I couldn’t believe what I had done to myself.

“I think I broke my own heart,” I told a friend

When sitting under the stars on my roof.

“What do you mean?” She said, utterly confused

“I told my heart that love didn’t exist, not for me.”

“My heart was young, beautiful, pure, and I took it

And I told it that it was foul.”

I told the stars they were beautiful,

The trees they were lively,

The birds they were gentle,

The breeze it was warm,

But I couldn’t consider myself the same.

I broke my own heart,

And I’m not sure how to put it back.