The Destruction that is Me - a slam poem
Entry posted by Poppy_ in Slam Poetry ·
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I’ve done it again.
I hate that my brain likes to play games with me as if I were a child desperate for a game of Hide and Seek. The way my mind melts with my emotions the way a lit candle rids itself of wax that runs everywhere creating a mess contained only by the surface the candle is placed on. Sometimes my brain tells me things and I believe it because I have always been so naïve that even the whisper of ‘I love you’ is enough to take over my body and give the power to someone undeserving. Maybe it’s not so much that I am naïve, but that I am desperate for the lying tongue of a snake to speak truth for once so I can escape this dungeon of utter abandonment. But like most people, snakes always have an ulterior motive.
I’ve done the thing where the words that are spoken in the quiet light of midnight suddenly ring too true in the ears of a once silenced mind and in an effort to reject the idea of strength, I made volcanos erupt in my place leaving nothing behind but ash and destruction. I don’t mean to cause such chaos but sometimes the idea of safety imposes an entirely different threat that I am not equipped to handle and despite the desire to reconcile the danger of the looming disaster, I cause earthquakes in my heart that expand too far for me to control. My lungs are filled with smoke and my bones are breaking one by one and this is what I am told is normal and if I were to possess the strength of my creator, I would no longer feel as if the tides were unmanageable. I would know that breathing underwater was not a learned ability but something you are born with because genetics told me that I was predestined for destruction simply because the life breathed into me was never meant to happen and I would never truly know what it felt like to be wanted the way the moon wants the stars.
There are days when my mind seems to be digging a new grave so frantically that I can’t sift through the released dirt that is covering every thought that was buried in the graveyard. The shattered headstones reading nothing but fragmented pieces of an idea or of hope that I have laid to rest. The insides of the coffins splayed in my mind reminding me of all the dreams I once had to be something other than the disappointment that is the equivalent of unknowingly eating sugar free candy. The way the first taste is pleasant on your tongue and you’re convinced this is what you want until you realize that the more you eat the candy filled with sugar imposters, the taste begins to change and is no longer desired. The way that you know this candy will help you reach the end goal of being weightless but the very taste is not satisfying the craving that bubbles up from within you. The candy that is just enough to get you further along in your journey, but not the candy you want forever.
The very constructs of my mind are so contradictory that most times I can’t even find a middle ground. I was taught that releasing waterfalls from within was something that was not beautiful or strong, but was something that would resonate like the aftershock of an earthquake that split the Earth wide open and would keep people as far away as possible. For their own safety, of course. I was also taught that it was okay to make rivers out of sadness and that act in itself was one to be admired because how noble you’d have to be to show the world you were not a statue. I’ve been taught to love your temple and praise the abilities you have deep in your core. I was also taught that curves are lazy and dangerous and if you really want to feel accepted the key is to deny yourself because no one loves a girl that’s best friends with chocolate cake. Don’t be the welcome mat of your own front door because you’ll end up tarnished and you’re only good for a season, but don’t be like the sun with the rest of the universe at your feet revolving around you because without you, life would not exist.
These ideas that were passed down to me have given me the complex that no matter what I do, it will always be wrong and the level of perfectionism I dream to achieve is something so unattainable because the line is blurred and there are too many situational compromises that require me to return to my box and make it impossible to flourish like a blooming sunflower in a field of relief. I hope that one day my mind will decide that games are childish and creativity is priceless and there is something so brave about releasing thoughts you keep locked away because the weight of words clouding your mind is sometimes more than any person can carry on their own. We are not made of stone, after all.
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