On The Fly

We swallow pain easier than we swallow pride Why is that?

Why do we succumb to hurt so easily Why do we allow sandpapered hands to caress our naked souls Without asking them to be more careful Why are we afraid to acknowledge that Sometimes we are fragile Sometimes we are on the verge of breaking Sometimes we are already broken and are barely keeping it together

We swallow pain easier than we swallow pride Why is that?

Why do we know truth and name it lie We see lie and believe it to be true Facing your own reflections for the first time Can you see who you’ve become Why is it so hard to accept that this is you That sometimes you shove pain down the throats of Others and expect them to take it Sometimes you are dangerous Sometimes you are the monster under someone’s bed Sometimes you are the reason they are unable to sleep at night Sometimes you are an untamed beast, a tsunami, a derailed train ready to destroy everything in your path with little effort

Sometimes you know this and it’s a painful realization

But you are fine with it because

At our last encounter

I undressed myself

As a subtle grin showed on your face

I slid under your covers

And waited for you

I always waited for you

You casually crawled in bed

You reached for me

I moved into you

My back to your chest

Between your legs mine found rest

Your hands had become

Unfamiliar with my landscape

And your breath was again new to my neck

You asked

“Were we almost at I love you?”

I sighed

Flashbacks to the moments where those

Words almost dripped from lips

Heavy on my tongue

As I gazed in your eyes

Ready and willing but knowing

That you wouldn’t

Say them back

“I was. I almost said it.”

Uneasy, now, next to you

Waiting for your response

Waiting for you to lie next to me

I was always waiting for you

“I didn’t know” you said.

It took all of 15 seconds for you to lie next to me

I shifted in your arms

How could you not know

My heart was embroidered on every sleeve

Of every shirt that I’ve ever worn while

Embracing you

I prayed for you

I stayed for you

I waited for you

I had always been waiting for you

“Well now you know” I whispered

You kissed my neck. Then my back.

I reluctantly turned over to face you

I wanted to see you again

I needed to see you again

And I did, in that moment

Under your covers

Waiting for you to say those words

But they never came

Even after you did, they never came

We made love again that night

For the first time

I walked away again the next morning

For the last time

…

sometimes in the late night,

and remind me that I’m not just flesh

but i am spirit and soul

that my luminous brown black skin

is not shallow and drenched with sin

but is thorough and lovely and mine 

to be celebrated unashamedly

touch me,

deeply,

when the white can’t take my black

wishes to send me back

can’t take my grit

and is fed up with my shit;

when the white is tearing and puts its fragility on display

run your finger up and down my spine

and remind me the strength of my black back

touch me

deeply

and remind me that I am concrete

i am absolute

am enough

seen

beyond surface and limitations and expectations

show me that my skin

is everlasting and impactful

touch me,

deeply,

when i am afraid to touch myself

take my hands 

place one on my face

the other on my chest

so that even as i feel the tears fall

i am reminded of my own resiliency

ball up my hand and make a fist

so that i am reminded of my own power

touch me

sometimes in the late night

when i forget who i am

and who i have the potential to be

touch me,

deeply,

You have to love someone in the cracks between the big moments. You have to grab their hand when you’re sitting on the couch watching Shark Tanktogether and you have to give them a little knowing look that says, “I see you and I love you here in the mundane moments of our life.” You have to understand who you are, to dive deep into the wounds of your past so that you don’t bring those wounds into the present. You need to know when it’s about you or when it’s about them. You have to carry your own pain.

It’s easy to fall in love with someone, to bask in newly-minted intimacy and lose yourself in the romance. It’s easy to start a love. It’s the staying part. The keeping part. The difficulty comes in the life plus love part, when you’re trying to squish two people together to make a unit.

When life enters the picture — bills and payments and jobs and stress and divided attentions — that’s when love starts to feel less like a romance and more like a battle. This is when the best of intentions fall to dust, when two people who used to spend a day in bed with their bodies intertwined are arguing about the dishes — as if the dishes ever matter all that fucking much.

To keep loving someone is an art. The start is the easiest part. To keep loving someone, you have to suspend the present moment in your mind and remember why you decided to love this person in those first glittery months of newness. You have to be in love when you don’t feel any particular tenderness, when bills are late or the trash hasn’t been emptied or you’re feeling underappreciated or when the ugly monsters from your past have convinced you that what happened then — whatever heartbreak exists in your memory — is here and real and will happen again. You have to pretend to be in love when you’re terrified of disappointment, of trusting someone, of believing that the person you’re waking up next to won’t ruin you, because they could.Love is being acutely aware of how quickly someone could ruin you.

To keep loving someone is to know yourself and to know how your past weaves a story in your present. How the relationship you did or did not have with your parents informs the relationship you have with your partner — regardless of whether you want it to or not. To keep loving someone you must examine yourself. You can’t blame again and again and again. You cannot be a victim to your life. Sometimes you have to realize the problem is, in part, you.

To keep loving someone is to be exposed to a mirror image of how fucked up you might be and to have to keep facing that image over and over and over. To keep loving someone is to fight to deny the part of you that will always secretly believe you are unworthy of love, to not let that insidious little worm of a belief make its way into your consciousness and lay flame to your love, to your life.

To keep loving someone deeply and truly is to see your own self nakedly and to — as crazy as it is — show that naked self to another person. To expose that person to who you are, underneath the masks and the defenses and the walls. To so intimately and bravely say, “This is me. Take me as I am.” And then hope they do not walk away from that, from you, from the real you.

To keep loving someone is an act of bravery. While it deals with matters of the heart, it is not for the lighthearted. There is nothing weak about loving someone. Nothing timid about it. It is for the strong, the ones willing to let love ruin them.

Love is for the ones who will risk being rejected in the hope of being seen. These are the warriors, the ones not willing to give up on another person. The ones who will not hold their partner to an impossible standard without analyzing themselves first. The ones who will not blame, but will solve — together. The ones who, despite living in Disposable Culture, will not dispose of a person for some far-off idealization of a perfect person.

The ones who say — you are my person — and who will fight to make it work because love is worth fighting for. The ones who do not put their lofty ideas of happiness onto another person’s shoulders, but vow to make themselves happy first and then share it with a person who does the same. The ones who know the difference between a love worth going all in for and a love that is unnecessarily dampening them, a love that is depleting the both of them. The ones who will know when to walk away and when to stay. Who will walk or stay when it’s needed. The ones who will tell the truth — to themselves, especially, because it starts there.

To keep loving someone is a challenge for the strong-willed, the ones willing to stare down fear and best it every time. It’s a badge of honor — to keep a love alive. It takes all you have, but the beautiful things always do.