October 12th - Three Unsafe Poems.

 Trapped

between giving too much and not enough
Contemplating trying to stretch and restructure who I am
to try and fit better
and recognizing that futility

rejected 
for the core of my being
and I can't change that...

I could mask it,
but to what avail.

You love what you would like me to be
and I can't perform that work of art.

Perhaps that's what all of us, any one of us, truly loves
is what we would like the other to be, and not what is
for do we really know it, other than through our own eyes

Trapped
Imperfect, hurt, intense, needing
I am
as I am... altogether too much and too little

there is nothing left to do
once presented with a list of this love's demands

but to withdraw.. knowing, I can't meet them.

What you ask of me is reasonable...
just impossible, because it's not me, not who I am.
I am still as such too much, and too little.

I can feel your anger, at my noncompliance
and I try not to embrace my feelings of self hate
for not succeeding, in meeting, love's expectations. 

My fault, I whisper to myself

Always, too much, not enough...

Trapped.

Slam!

I stand shaking as the door closes
barely missing me
I can feel the tremor of it in the air
I can feel you yelling on the other side
I can hear you swearing at me
You don't want to look at me
my tears make you angry

you don't like me weak
you want me strong
you don't want me needy
you want me fed
you don't want me...
you want someone else

someone I might be
when I'm fifty.

I can never live up to your 
expectations...

I can't live.. standing here
on the other side of this door
with the shock wave
in the air.

Conjugating verbs between tears.

you tell me what I say... 
I listen to what I feel
and I try to say it again...
what I said
what I wanted to say
to make real
what I meant to say...

again you tell me what I say
but it's not what I thought I said
It's not what I thought
It's not what I felt
It's not...
It's not... 

I'm confused.

"Don't tell me that anymore" you say
"I don't want to hear you say that again"
tell you what? what did I say?
Can you tell me what I said?
I didn't say that...
I didn't mean to say that.. 
I meant...
what I wanted to say... 

you say "It doesn't matter... we've heard it all before"
"We're sick of it.  you saying that"

But I haven't said it?
have I said it?
What I was trying to say...
I didn't say that... I said..

I said.. 

what did I say?... 

What have I said?

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