You tell me my stories are fairytales,
but I don’t write of horses and unicorns,
that gallop on oceans and bleed with a healing touch,
or demons and dragons that spit fire,
and tell you they can be brought to dust.
Through my words I weave a voyage.
I hold your hand. I am with you.
When I tell you the story of a ship,
its masts and the treacheries of the sea,
why do I always lose you in hurricanes,
though I clutch your hand tight
and scream to you the shore is just beyond?
Why do your eyes rove for tornados
that will tear the sails and throw you off balance,
when I tell you the sea is calm?
Why do you not believe in happy endings anymore?
You tell me all that have ever been are failed love stories,
but love for you is a photograph.
A photograph with amethyst skies,
pouncing chemical hearts and butterflies.
A photograph you keep in your back pocket.
A photograph you resent when clouds mask the sky.
Or have those clouds poured hard upon you?
Were you abandoned when skies turned grey?
So there’s sex and cigarettes but no love.
No strings attached, for your broken strings hang loose.
In the nights though, when sleep is a far cry,
you write for love eulogies.
You’ve captured snapshots, and called it love,
but love, I tell you, is a movie.
If I write a story,
with men and women and sometimes rainbows,
which are not colourful spatters in the sky but gender choices,
with azure of the galaxies, butterflies and clear sunny skies,
with also storms, tornados, whirlpools and hurricanes,
but not horrid fates but happy endings,
I wonder if you will believe me.
If I give you a movie, and tell you it’s love, will you believe me?
My words have soaked your melancholy now.
I write of heartbreak, death and rape
without trigger warnings.
Am I withering too?
Am I breaking slowly to become one of you,
so I don’t become the remnant of a rejected concept?
You let your doors open so I can come close,
but when I do, I hit walls-
protective walls of your own making,
where you live with scars you won’t let go.
As I hustle to break those walls and touch you,
I wonder if you will fight for me the same.
And you tell me, no.
I am a daydreamer. I am deluded.
‘You’re only cool if you don’t care.’
Have you never shoved your face in pillows,
for you want to be seen breaking,
when you say you are just fine?
Have you never shoved your face in pillows,
for you could not rain flowers upon people
who pricked themselves with thorns and called it atonement,
just like you do?
When I come to you with all my roses,
you will prick yourself harder this time.
You will call yourself a grenade, and push me away.
To me, you won’t give anything.
You weep for things you push away,
and I wonder if you think that’s cool.
Why is that cool? Why is this not?
When my heart sinks, I write sad poetry.
When your heart does, you slap it with toxic positivity.
Toxic, but positivity.
Your positivity looks to me,
like a blade dipped in anesthesia with the fragrance of sangria.
If there’s no dark sky, how will you see the stars?
But when I write of stars and dark skies,
and all I write is just one poem,
you call me a narcissistic poet.
When all I write is what you wish, but never dare to hope, why do you call my stories fairytales?
Image Credits: Andrea Riondino
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