Bottled up/Love
I understand that expression now, âbottled upâ. It has to be a bottle because when bottles are shaken pressure mounts inside. Youâre corked. I have full ability to get my words out, and to put them on paper, or in music, or maybe relay them to a therapist, but I donât. I subconsciously refuse. Itâs so awful, but itâs too pathetic to be valid. What I like about poetry is that sometimes youâll stumble across a poem that perfectly encapsulates a specific feeling or thought youâre experiencing. And Iâm not talking about âI love youâ â which the most unobservant person will realise is the message of every song, poem, book, movie, speech, everything â but âI am sitting in an unknown cafĂŠ while itâs snowing outside, and everything feels perfect and good in this moment even though I am only sitting in a cafĂŠ aloneâ like in Bukowskiâs âNirvanaâ. Or âEverything is too much or too little and, for a while, I donât want to concern myself with anything, especially anything man-madeâ like in Dionne Brandâs âI am giving up on land to light onâ. We studied that poem in my English class and the only thing anyone could talk about were the anti-colonial themes, but it can be so much more than that.
Do you know how isolating it is to hear âI love youâ in every piece of media and art and song when youâre not in love and have never been in love? I donât pity people who have had their heart broken because there are a million heartbreak songs and a thousand movies about breakups. There are no songs about never having felt love. There are no songs that capture those specific feelings. Itâs either âI love youâ or âI loved youâ.
Even this essay-poem-disaster has become about love. God.
I feel like Iâm speaking a different language that only I speak. I can only translate it through songs and poems â sometimes book characters â but thatâs at best a half-translation. Maybe a line here or there will cover a side feeling, but never the heart of it. I imagine that if youâre in love, any old Shakespeare sonnet will do pretty well. Do you know âI Am A Rockâ by Simon and Garfunkle? Thatâs the closest Iâll come.
For example, angsty love issues aside, I really want to leave my home city. My home city is beautiful, I love my family, and Iâve loved growing up here. (âLoveâ in this context is okay, for your information.) But I yearn to leave, and see other things, and get away from all the people I love. Maybe in Barcelona Iâll find whatever Iâm looking for.
