women

We are the lions that sleep amongst sheep. Drawn to weak men who seek strong women that represent that which they cannot give themselves. Yet, whilst we are strong and capable, we have also learned to be soft, to be vulnerable, to understand our weaknesses do not define us, nor do they serve as representation of our whole.

We have learnt to be lovers, to be caregivers, to be mothers, whilst having to fend for ourselves. We have needed to be courageous whilst the world around us has been cruel. We are held accountable, held to a standard by those who do not do so for themselves. They see us as fragile, yet we have shown more toughness in one single menstrual cycle than most have shown in a lifetime.

We have been their saviours. We have been their muses and inspiration. We have wept for them when they could not weep themselves. We have also wept because of them, because they could not encompass the totality of their being. We have suffered through their insufferable hatred of themselves. And not hardened but softened ever more.

They have been shallow, cold, manipulative and when we have shown them love, empathy, forgiveness and understanding in return, they have perceived it as weakness, disqualified us as adversaries and left us for dead. Still, we go on.

I think of soft hearts and gentle curves and how they have been grabbed at, abused and broken. How we have offered our hopes and dreams and opened our doors to the possibility of a shared existence only to have them robbed and burned. Yet we build again and again and we do not lose hope.

We are the fearless, who have lived through the destruction. Battered and bruised but never defeated. Shedding ourselves each month so that we may one day bear their children. Giving life to a broken world.

We are the representation of all that they fear they will never be man enough to be. Soft yet powerful. Afraid yet courageous. Broken yet not bitter. We embody the duality that they have been taught to hide. We have been teachers when the lessons were unwilling to be learnt. We have forgiven even when it has been impossible to forget.

And we stand amongst the flock, ever more willing to take on the burden of their inabilities to feed themselves. We nurture when we could destroy. We cradle when we could suffocate out of the collective sorrow, bred by their misunderstandings of themselves.

We are the lions and you will know us by our roar.

Futile love

I shake from the words I have read and cannot unread. Her words poetically sounding out the depth of an affection only a lion could know. A fierce kind of love that ripped right through you. She loved you like a storm loves to be chaotic. Won you over with talk of dreams that engulfed your imagination more so than any other lover before.

I know that kind of love. I have felt it in my heart and in my loins. I have lost count of the nights spent howling at the moon, broken and consumed by such a love. Felt demolished by it. Would have died for it. And did, in a way, many times.

I question if anything will ever taste that way again and if not, would it even be worth the bite. But to think like this is pointless. I could spend my whole life waiting for that kind of love to come again. Perhaps it was just never meant to last forever, as I wished it had. I mean, could a fire burn that bright for the rest of a lifetime. Could you live with the burns.

So I look at you now and you say you’re fine. You tell me tales of how that love was toxic. How it was never built to last. Yet I feel inside that you still think of it. Pine for it. Perhaps in the same way that I think of him and wonder if he ever pines for me, for my poetic love.

I think of her and of you and what it must be like to now be with me, in the same way that I think of him and how he is and who he might now be loving. It seems I am the child of all my broken hearts and yet, sometimes I am filled with concern that I may never love you the way that she did. Don’t we all deserve the fire. Don’t we all deserve the flames.

I love you like a soft breeze. Gentle and able. It grows, slowly and there are doubts. It’s an honest kind of love. You said to me we were like two people learning to eat salad after years of burgers. Is this what other people feel when they’re in love. It’s been so long since I’ve had a stable kind of love, I really can’t remember.

In truth, maybe I’ve never had a stable kind of love. Only broken plates and screams. Tears on street corners that faded into rain. Walking out of my way just in case I get to see them. Handwritten letters in handmade envelopes, posted in mailboxes and found by lovers other than me.

They called it crazy, I said it was love.

I think we all want the storm though. I think we all want to be torn apart by the passion of someone else’s desire. For our heart, our mind, our body. For someone to look at us like they’ve seen the light at the end of the tunnel. For them to hold us in a death grip made up of a future so grand it would be impossible to let go.

I wonder if we could ever have that with each other, or whether it’s an instantaneous kind of thing. Have we been so burned that we won’t allow ourselves the fall. Jaded by the disappointing endings that followed on from such firework starts. Stuck in a romance novel that finished several chapters ago, but we can’t put it down.

In truth, I don’t think our love story inspires you. I’m unconvinced that my body’s curves make you wish they were full of your DNA. I believe you could survive without me. I imagine you write lists of all my faults inside your journals, as you have no doubt done with others gone before.

Or perhaps, we will just accept that I will never be her and you will never be him. Perhaps we will simply be us, loving at a temperature that keeps us warm enough all year.

Notes from the past

There’s something intrinsically maddening about the remnants of your lover’s past being delicately strewn across your present. How handwritten notes and tender memories linger in the air and discreetly hide themselves in cracks and crevices, tentatively waiting to be found. Each discovery sparking a bout of nervous energy, that curiously prods at bruises to see if they still hurt.

Those pockets of happiness once found in the arms of another and the cold cuts that later came, unexpectedly despite the warning signs. Each moment now reverberating through your body like a microscopic shockwave, that started a lifetime ago and has only now managed to catch up with you.

The touch of my skin inspires the curiosity of yours. Am I the reminder. Do my doe eyes bring you back to a time when your last love looked at you with such intent, you could almost hear your heart crack under the weight of the impending escape.

The echoes of your past lovers cause tremors in my moans and cries. I see their faces in my dreams at night, hauntingly, as if they wish to warn me of the dangers I have yet to face. They whisper indignantly, as I lay beside you, wondering why it is not they who do so anymore.

I taste the sorrow in your kiss at times, as if our embrace was transporting you back to a moment you had long since forgotten and now wish you could once again forget. I note the way in which you read passages aloud, as though in hope that they might hear.

Have faith, they said and you did, didn’t you and what become of that. The underlying sense of betrayal that now carries with you, so heavily, into our story, as a chapter rolls into another. Yet those characters have long been dead.

I see you think of them, as though your mind is projecting onto the bare walls that surround us. I feel the contemplation of what could have been, if only…I question whether I too, will be nothing more than a fragmented thought to you one day.

The tracing of your soft edges with my fingertips morphing into the touch of another. My scent gently becoming engrained in the linen where you will later lay with someone else. Will they ponder about the intricacies of our love as their lips meet yours in the dead of night, eyes closed, mind whirling.

Perhaps one day I too will be nothing more than a note laying dormant in your kitchen. Reminding you of times gone by, when we spoke of a future that never came to be.