I asked myself what if
I stopped leading and instead waited
For you to come to me organically and fully unbaited?
…I’m still waiting
Tag: long distance
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Still waiting
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Just a passing thought
I think we should break up
Not because I don’t love you
I do
I just know you don’t love me
The way I want you to
I know we need different things
Than the other one gives
I want you to be
The one I come home to
But it’s become quickly apparent
You’re set in your ways
Independent and often off alone
Forgetful of the girlfriend
You say you’re proud to have in your life
But I’m too far away to be more
Than just a passing thought
And I’d rather be nothing
Than less than all the reels you consume
I’ll miss you
But I already do
So I guess the real hard part
Is letting us fall apart
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Slack
This stopped working for me
when you stopped trying…
I could stay and hold out
hope my intuition is lying;but the realization I had
the other night all alone
was that if in my body it feels bad,
then I know all I need to know.In the past it was habit
to seek answers and reason,
trust you when you insist
that it’s a misguided feeling;but trust is all I have left when
young love dies and disintegrates;
can’t ignore the change in the wind
or against better judgment waitfor things to feel better,
now in this distant cadence;
vertigo from the teeter
that shakes me in your long silence.Since I’m know for wearing my tender
heart hopelessly on my sleeve,
I need all the reminders
I give to you unconditionally.I don’t think it’s a lot to ask
to hear from you at the intervals.
Why would you choose to mask
when love’s willing to catch your fall?It feels dumb when I tell friends
about how unhappy I am.
Worse, between us the trend
to in different places land,yet somehow walk away
thinking everything is okay.
It feels real illogical in my brain
the way you’re so good to reframemy intuitive knowing that
there’s something you’re hiding.
It feels more and more like a trap,
like you’re waiting for better timingthan leaving me now in this moment
when I seem so distressed and distraught.
It’s not my will or intent
to make you feel like you’re notallowed to walk away for even reasons like
you changed your mind about the meaning
of where cupid chose to strike
his arrow that now is appearingto fall out of your chest.
I get it, you didn’t know I was trans
when you first gave me that yes,
until morning we dancedon that first long and tender night.
But, I’m afraid my big fear
has turned out to be right;
it would hurt less if you’d be clearthat you can’t love me back,
because I’m not what you thought.
Cut yourself all the slack;
no one here is at fault.I’ve grown real used to this
Being the one no one ends up with.
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Let me sit with you
I don’t mean to be so unappealing,
healing.
Like you’re better at dealing
but you’re not, if this is the last time
you say that you’ll try-
at least I’m moving through instead of shoving down-
that’s the lie you contrive
when you conceal from yourself
the truth you can’t fucking face,
like a fogged up mirror –
it’s easier to look at –
when you don’t like your reflection.
All the work and hard effort calling you forward with intention.That looks different than “letting it slide off your back.”
Every person I’ve heard claim that is hiding behind them a stack
of unread novels of hurt and dismissed emotions of pain and loss.
You think tossing them in your lockbox makes you a boss
not a whacked out wannabe
trying to be better than free.
You’re just like me, in need of
a witness willing willing to look
with eyes wide open into your books,
your archives of tragic humiliation
and harmful acts you acted out in frustration.
Because we all have sorrows deep
in our storehouses; dusty, we keep
piles high of dingy stories we would rather never tell,
nor have any onlooker see
that we are just as capable of extreme
violence and hate, justifying our intent so malicious.
See, it’s not just the ones who harmed you that refine
the meaning of vicious.It’s you, too, with your chin held so high.
Like if you lifted it up to the sky
you’d lose sight of the mountains
your ungrieved losses are accumulating.
Hold your head up high on the lie
that you’re much better at letting it go
than I am,
even though here you are resisting the natural flow
and ebb of joy and sweet sorrow,
only along for the ride if the waters stay shallow.
That’s why my depth scares you so,
even though you claim it’s annoyance
that causes you to shame and blame and adopt an attitude of avoidance.
Because to feel and deal means to heal,
but you’d rather I do this over there,
far away from your vicinity,
lest you develop an affinity
for what it feels like right here
in this soft place inside me
where the empty hollow places
have begun to blooming
fluorescent and abounding,
shining bright lights that blind you and chase out
all the darkness
that once invited the dust to settle
in between pages unread and on mountains unscaled.That echo inside you is a feeling I don’t miss.
Neither is that expression lifeless and pale.
I’ll admit, you wear it so well
and convincing, like joy
is just about chasing
the dopamine and stories to tell
on repeat about the good ol’ days.
Into that slot machine go your coins,
bet after bet that forgetting is the way
to freedom from ever having to face up to or put on display
your archives of past hurts and harms still waiting and wanting
for you to turn the key
into your own broken heart, instead of carrying on with apathy,claiming the past is in the past when it lives right under your floorboards,
the ones that prop up your soap box about
how you diy’d your way to restore
this fixer upper you call home now.
But I see thru you like an bat with sonar.
I see the echos and hear them holler
at you to slow down long enough
to heed their warnings against becoming just another follower
of the legacy you were born into –
the one of abuse and divorce and dying with stored up hate,
while convincing yourself the cancer and body aches are just coincidence.
Don’t mistake
your denial all the while soothing, for a path to the freedom you claim to have found and live by,when I can see you’re so consumed by pages you refuse to dust off and read,
afraid the task will hold you down, cost you time.
But it’s refusing to sit and hold tenderly
pages that need to be seen –
you tell yourself and me too that you know the secret to getting by
higher than high –
when this is the lie that shackles you to your own dungeon,
the lowest of lows.
You stay detached and defensive;
mask it with laid back and easy going shrugs,
like you’re too cool and elusive.
Your cares quietly remain in the background unhung
until you explode them internally or towards me.
This is a dance I’ve already done.Before you when I was married
to the glitz and the glamour;
another white man in Charlotte
carried, buried by the successful clamor
of the same sauce you’re selling –
midwestern versus the South;
either way, I can tell that bbq tastes real good in your mouth.
You’re pitching hot like a door salesman,
but I stay quiet long enough to also see the outcome.
Man, you can’t tell me it didn’t hurt on the way out.Because the lies you feed yourself are not sustainable.
Take it from me –
I nearly died before thirty,
choking on salesman bbq drool,
using me like a tool.
Fuck trophy wife! What he wanted was a doormat for life,
the kind that won’t ask you wipe off your feet or the fog off the mirror.
It’s just the way you fixed the lighting that makes you think you see clearer
than my teary eyes worn and weary
from doing the legwork to carry
my own dusty books out the door.
Read them first, felt the horror,
before actually letting go.
This! Is what brought me nearer
to you … or the next man…I’ll be honest, it’s not looking good for you,
if your spewing at the mouth while insisting you’re past the past isn’t a clue
that you’re actually afraid to turn the key,
unlock the deadbolt and enter,
light up your own archives
and dismantle
and unravel
your own stories. Feel between the lines,
until feeling higher than high comes from sitting in the lows,
not running away from the past you already know you can’t out-go,
outrun, outsmart or out-argue.That’s why I’m standing here asking you one last time
to stop trying to wine and dine your way into my heart or your own ending,
and instead light the candle, hold my hand
and read me something sad, long and rough,
’til you feel that impending
release of what you’ve buried and insisted you stopped carrying
so long ago, like it’s not written all over your sweet face.Can you really loosen your grip
if you refuse to pick up the pain in the first place?
It’s relative, so stop chasing the story
coming from out there. All the vendors
trying to get you to spend your hard earned money
on their promises of success and happiness,
when the secret they won’t tell you is written on these pages.
I’m begging, pick up your own books and learn
from your own archives stored up aching
like Aladdin’s buried treasure. Stop mistaking
rubble for your own genie
waiting eager, willing
like I am to take that magic carpet ride.
The ups and downs, lefts and right –
it’ll turn your stomach upside.
Down here with you, I’ll stay,
if you need ’til the day that I die.
Promise, I’m in no hurry.
I’ll stay as long as it takes
to get it all out in the open.
This is the freedom I’ve chosen –
to be seen fully broken
but still here,
like a dog the sounds of a higher frequency.That’s why
in this moment all I can say is fuck your complacency!
Fuck your stories of elated recency!
The drugs you use to get high don’t fool me!
You’re not better at consistency!
Fuck, there’s just no way you’ve let it go!
Because if you had, you wouldn’t still get so hot
when something in the present makes the echos from below
impossible to claim you’re not distraught
by a past that caught up
despite the molly and lsd.
You cannot hide from
the cobwebs I see, even through your thick walls
lacing beautiful patterns to safe-keep
the archives into which I beg your permission to leap!
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Both as the menders
Can I be really honest
About this thing between us?
You feel like the good night’s rest
Of which I’ve always been suspicious.Don’t get my wrong, I really like you!
I even like how much you make my cheeks hurt;
From the joyful play that’s now your purview;
Childlike awe and freedom in adulthood.A feeling for me that is a first!
Because I’m used to shallow breaths,
Not feeling like my heart could burst.
Instead, downcast gaze tracing footsteps,Not raising my eyes to the sky in wonder.
But listening – so heightened and on edge;
Not receiving sounds so openly with candor –
The way your voice lands like a long lost amends.And I hate that this is where I still land!
Often one foot back in the past.
But these days it feels less like a summons
And more often like a much needed contrast.The kind that reminds me to keep going –
No longer words I bitterly swallow –
But a deep inside, fully felt knowing
That all that pain was never hollow.Because, judge it if you must,
There’s still a part of me – maybe many –
Who doubt and refuse to trust
That life is anything but plentyFull of violence and injustice.
They’re the parts that keep open my back door
Not just on you, but life and all this
Hoping there was something more.Thank you for meeting me in this moment!
I worked so fucking hard to get to here,
When all the parts of me that were stolen
Become the me’s I deeply revere.The truth is I didn’t see this coming!
Not me, not you, not so much possibility.
But you showed up and in me drumming
The beat of my long lost creativity.Don’t get me wrong, I’ve found my ways
Over the sad and scary trials.
In all my surviving, there was sometimes play…
I’m glad I held out for its revival!So again, Thank You for arriving
in this plot twist; perfectly timed entrance!
A love so steady is surprising –
My real life healthy, secure romance.No really, Thank You, because I know the cost
It takes to show up so grown and healed.
And more importantly, willing to give love a shot
When it’s the lingering hurts we’d rather conceal.Know that I’m here for all of it, all of you!
Even parts you’d rather I never encounter.
That’s right, I’m actually willing to lose
For the chance to finally be keeper and founderOf the worth it part of the story,
When we see clearly past the pain.
From here on out, no longer in a hurry,
No longer looking for someone to blame.Just hopeful, grateful and fully surrendered
To the invitation forward surefooted and free.
In love and awe, You and I, both as the menders
Combining beautifully our tapestries.blog, IFS, life, long distance, love, love story, mental-health, plot twist, poetry, ptsd, recovery, romance, trauma, writing
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When I put my foot in my mouth
I never thought I could feel so broken
Yet so free –
Like my insides were on the outside
And you could see every part of me;All the shady and twisted up
Ways I came to be
So beautiful and lonely
And too stubborn for a love story.Because I do it without thinking;
I kick away and push you back.
Sometimes when I least fucking expect it,
My insecurities come out and attack.I feel like such a disappointment
When I hear it take over your voice.
Oops… there she goes again!
I swear I had no fucking choiceTo become so frustratingly distant,
Guarded, harsh, and completely off track
About the reality that someone like you
Could ever love me back.But I don’t mean to make excuses or turn
The focus back to my heartache
When it’s you, not me, who in this moment
Has every right to leave and takeNot a single glance back in my direction,
Not a second or passing thought,
Because if she can say something so jarring
It makes sense you would rather naughtInvest more time, energy and trust –
Especially given the distance.
I know it doesn’t take much reason
To feel the rise of logic’s resistanceTo putting your heart and tender emotions
On a line for someone like me –
Someone who is still afraid to let themselves love
And learn the meaning of unconditionally.So, I am hoping you really do see
Every part of me and right through
And that tomorrow you have more resolve
To invest in us anew.Because, I promise, I’ve never been more ready for
A love like the one we’re creating.
I just need you to give me more time and patience
To make some missteps in all this relating.See, what you need to know about me in this thing
We call dating – even if we still won’t call it that –
Is that I think I’m ready to stop running and hiding
Or letting my younger parts create old habitats.So, even though I put my foot in my mouth
And gave you cause to wonder or question
How this thing between us, despite distance,
Might be temporary or clandestine;Truth is, I’m far more invested than I intended
When I first said, “I don’t mean to be bold,
But…” I think you knew it then like you do in this moment –
It’s because of you, I want to grow old.Fuck, that’s probably too much to say
At this point in time when we’re still so nervous
To trust that love could show up unexpected,
But denying our connection would be a disserviceTo the things we already know about
How we’ve done this together in past lifetimes.
Hell, at this point I’d even put good money down
That you are the reason my thoughts come out in rhyme.But I digress, and I’m incredibly grateful
You find it endearing when I do
Use far too many words to find my footing
And my fearful way back home to you.Because you know that even though I’m afraid
I’m not the person with whom anyone ends up,
I refuse to give up or leave you now
Without first fully surrendering to love.
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I lied.
Ok I lied that
the last one
was
the last one
bc i gotta send this to say
I wish I was there
so that the first thing you heard in the morning
is me saying that I love your sweet face.
Parker Stillwater 