I can’t give you , me.
As much as I love love.
As much as I want to be loved.
I can’t give you, me.
To the world, I am a strong woman.
I am the cliff that men train to hike,
I am the oak tree that stands after the hurricane,
I am the earth that lies beneath your feet,
And you think you can walk all over it.
But the moment it shakes you are wiped out,
Like a tiny speck on the face of the moon.
I am Maya Angelou’s phenomenal woman,
I am the one that gives Trump nightmares,
The one that was once tagged as a witch.
And in some century the suffragettes.
To the world, I am all that.
But to the man, I love, not that at all.
When I am in love,
I am like the drop of wax slowly and gracefully,
Trembling down the lengths of a candle,
Warm but soft and crushed by the tip of the man’s finger.
As a woman in love,
I am the tiny speck hiding in the pollen of a sunflower,
As the sun gives it light, so it owns the power to burn it.
Love makes me care, love makes me give you my all,
And if I give you me, I will love you that way.
Love you more than you ever imagined and
Be there for you more than you deserve.
Going an extra mile after 5000 extra miles is my thing.
Unlucky for you, I have been there done that.
Traveled those miles, been crushed and burnt and broken.
Now, when you say the word love,
I hear my bones cracking like you’ve already started
To tighten your grip on my fragility
And when you say ‘commitment’
I feel my existence withering away in gray ashes.
And when you say ‘relationship’
I crumble like a hard rock sliding down a cliff.
It’s not you, it’s those words.
Those exact words men used before you and
That makes me wonder
Why would you be any different?
I know its foolish to give up on love.
As they say, when one bus goes…
But what if the buses keep coming but none of them is the right one.
I may sound like a coward to you,
Like a hopeless, powerless, weak woman.
Too afraid to put herself out there.
Too scared to just ‘get on with life’.
The fact is- I am different.
I have a history and I have been at places you cannot imagine.
When I love someone, I give them a weird sense of control over me.
I swear its not voluntary, its like air.
People have used that to my disadvantage very well.
To humiliate me, harass me, crush me and dehumanize me.
And now that I know how delicate it is,
I rather guard it myself.
You are human after all, and I am afraid,
Knowingly or unknowingly if someday
You decide to use it as a weapon on me,
I may not find back the strength
To put the pieces back together,
Not all broken mirrors can be fixed.
Sometimes the shards are too sharp and cut too deep.
