Blood On The Love Letters | A Poem

 

My fingers grow tired yet I persist 

Pencil lead coated fingertips,

frantic scribed thoughts on wrinkled paper for you to never read.

I always thought I could write in emotion clearly defined

Instead I craft impossible steps to nowhere,

A Penrose stairwell through an art gallery of my own Freudian creations

A showcase of all my failed attempts at identity and expression.

Caught within an infinite loop of selfish desire

A boy who once thought himself a man who lacked pervasive thought.

A man who once defined love as something synonymous with passion. 

At what point did it become about measuring how much I had to put out in order to receive

Keeping tabs of Love lost and Love gained 

A folded paper score sheet in my back pocket 

Check marks scribbled in blood now browned and dried.

Sacrifice was something I was unwilling to give 

bitterness built itself into resentment

While I chased that which other people said I should crave.

What is a contented life?

Perhaps an American Gothic picturesque.

Or a white picket fenced 1950s American classic.

Let's breed like rabbits in the night time 

Make our mother's grandmothers and their mother's great-grandmothers.

I'll work a 9 to 5 and you'll bake sourdough until the monotony comes to a head and we drive each other mad.

This is not love. It is a setup.

This portrait is one crafted by a dozen other hands.

The strokes of the brush were never our own

Paint layered on a canvas and we never got a say in what colors went where. 

Now it's too late; there's already blood on the love letters

And the stains will never wash out.

They say time heals all wounds but it's been years,

Years of bleeding hearts, scribbled words and muddied emotions. 

So tell me darling, did we ever understand one another? 

Did we truly ever explore the dark recesses of each other's minds?

Cuff me to the head board and I'll wrap my hands around your throat. 

What is this violence we share?

Let's turn the sheets crimson with the blood of our hearts

And leave scars on each other's skin like marks on a map to unattainable treasure

Tell me, what is love?

Baby;

You're hurting me.