by Rupi Kaur
i know. i know. your excuses make all the sense in the world. and i get a little carried away for no good reason and eventually begin crying. but what else do you expect baby. i love you so much. i’m sorry i thought you were lying.
that’s when you hold your head with your hands in frustration. half begging me to stop. half tired and sick of it. the toxin in our mouths has burnt holes in our cheeks. we look less alive than we used to. less color in our faces. but don’t kid yourself. no matter how bad it gets we both know you still wanna nail me to the ground.
especially when i’m screaming so loud our fighting wakes the neighbors. and they come running to the door to save us. baby don’t open it.
instead. lie me down. lay me open like a map. and with your finger trace the places you still want to **** out of me. kiss me like i am the center point of gravity and you are falling into me like my soul is the focal point of yours. and when your mouth is kissing not my mouth but other places. my legs will split apart out of habit. and that’s when. i pull you in. welcome you. home.
when the entire street is looking out their windows wondering what all the commotion is. and the fire trucks come rolling in to save us but they can’t distinguish whether these flames began with our anger or our passion. i will smile. throw my head back. arch my body like a mountain you want to split in half. baby lick me.
like your mouth has the gift of reading and i’m your favorite book. find your favorite page in the soft spot between my legs and read it carefully. fluently. vividly. don’t you dare leave a single word untouched. and i swear my ending will be so good. the last few words will come. running to your mouth. and when you’re done. take a seat. cause it’s my turn to make music with my knees pressed to the ground.
sweet baby. this. is how we pull language out of one another with the flick of our tongues. this is how we have the conversation. this. is how we make up.
- how we make up
when my mother says i deserve better
i snap to your defense out of habit
he still loves me i shout
she looks at me with defeated eyes
the way a parent looks at their child
when they know this is the type of pain
even they can’t fix
and says
it means nothing to me if he loves you
if he can’t do a single wretched thing about it
you were so distant
i forgot you were there at all
you said. if it is meant to be. fate will bring us back together. for a second i wonder if you are really that naive. if you really believe fate works like that. as if it lives in the sky staring down at us. as if it has five fingers and spends its time placing us like pieces of chess. as if it is not the choices we make. who taught you that. tell me. who convinced you. you’ve been given a heart and a mind that isn’t yours to use. that your actions do not define what will become of you. i want to scream and shout it’s us you fool. we’re the only ones that can bring us back together. but instead i sit quietly. smiling softly through quivering lips thinking. isn’t it such a tragic thing. when you can see it so clearly but the other person doesn’t.
don’t mistake
salt for sugar
if he wants to
be with you
he will
it’s that simple
he only whispers i love you
as he slips his hands
down the waistband
of your pants
this is where you must
understand the difference
between want and need
you may want that boy
but you certainly
don’t need him
you were temptingly beautiful
but stung when i got close
the woman who comes after me will be a bootleg version of who i am. she will try and write poems for you to erase the ones i’ve left memorized on your lips but her lines could never punch you in the stomach the way mine did. she will then try to make love to your body. but she will never lick, caress, or suck like me. she will be a sad replacement of the woman you let slip. nothing she does will excite you and this will break her. when she is tired of falling apart for a man that doesn’t give back what he takes she will recognize me in your eyelids staring at her with pity and it’ll hit her. how can she love a man who is busy loving someone he can never get his hands on again.
the next time you
have your coffee black
you’ll taste the bitter
state he left you in
it will make you weep
but you’ll never
stop drinking
you’d rather have the
darkest parts of him
than have nothing
more than anything
i want to save you
from myself
you have spent enough nights
with his manhood curled inside your legs
to forget what loneliness feels like
you whisper
i love you
what you mean is
i don’t want you to leave
that’s the
thing about love
it marinates your lips
till the only word your
mouth remembers
is his name
it must hurt to know
i am your most
beautiful
regret
i didn’t leave because
i stopped loving you
i left because the longer
i stayed the less
i loved myself
you mustn’t have to
make them want you
they must want you themselves
did you think i was a city
big enough for a weekend getaway
i am the town surrounding it
the one you’ve never heard of
but always pass through
there are no neon lights here
no skyscrapers or statues
but there is thunder
for i make bridges tremble
i am not street meat i am homemade jam
thick enough to cut the sweetest
thing your lips will touch
i am not police sirens
i am the crackle of a fireplace
i’d burn you and you still
couldn’t take your eyes off me
cause i’d look so beautiful doing it
you’d blush
i am not a hotel room i am home
i am not the whiskey you want
i am the water you need
don’t come here with expectations
and try to make a vacation out of me
the one who arrives after you
will remind me love is
supposed to be soft
he will taste
like the poetry
i wish i could write
if
he can’t help but
degrade other women
when they’re not looking
if toxicity is central
to his language
he could hold you
in his lap and be soft
honey
that man could feed you sugar and
douse you in rose water
but that still could not
make him sweet
- if you want to know the type of man he is
i am a museum full of art
but you had your eyes shut
you must have known
you were wrong
when your fingers
were dipped inside me
searching for honey that
would not come for you
the thing
worth holding on to
would not have let go
when you are broken
and he has left you
do not question
whether you were
enough
> the problem was
you were so enough
he was not able to carry it
love made the danger
in you look like safety
even when you undress her
you are searching for me
i am sorry i
taste so good
when the two of you
make love it is
still my name
that rolls off your
tongue accidently
you treat them like they
have a heart like yours
but not everyone can be as
soft and as tender
you don’t see the
person they are
you see the person
they have the potential to be
you give and give till
they pull everything out of you
and leave you empty
i had to leave
i was tired of
allowing you to
make me feel
anything less
than whole
you were the most beautiful thing i’d ever felt till now. and i was convinced you’d remain the most beautiful thing i’d ever feel. do you know how limiting that is. to think at such a ripe young age i’d experienced the most exhilarating person i’d ever meet. how i’d spend the rest of my life just settling. to think i’d tasted the rawest form of honey and everything else would be refined and synthetic. that nothing beyond this point would add up. that all the years beyond me could not combine themselves to be sweeter than you.
- falsehood
i don’t know what living a balanced life feels like
when i am sad
i don’t cry i pour
when i am happy
i don’t smile i glow
when i am angry
i don’t yell i burn
the good thing about feeling in extremes is
when i love i give them wings
but perhaps that isn’t
such a good thing cause
they always tend to leave
and you should see me
when my heart is broken
i don’t grieve
i shatter
i came all this way
to give you all these things
but you aren’t even looking
the abused
and the
abuser
- i have been both
i am undoing you
from my skin
it wasn’t you i was kissing
— don’t be mistaken
it was him on my mind
your lips were just convenient
it always comes back to you
boils
circles
itches
its way back to you
i was music
but you had your ears cut off
my tongue is sour
from the hunger of
missing you
i will not have you
build me into your life
when
what i want is to
build a life with you
- the difference
rivers fall from my mouth
tears my eyes can’t carry
you are snakeskin
and i keep shedding you somehow
my mind is forgetting
every exquisite detail
of your face
the letting go has
become the forgetting
which is the most
pleasant and saddest thing
to have happened
you were not wrong for leaving
you were wrong for coming back
and thinking
you could have me
when it was convenient
and leave when it was not
how can i write
if he took my hands
with him
neither of us is happy
but neither of us wants to leave
so we keep breaking one another
and calling it love
we began
with honesty
let us end
in it too
- us
your voice
alone
drives me
to tears
i don’t know why
i split myself open
for others knowing
sewing myself up
hurts this much
afterward
people go
but how
they left
always stays
love is not cruel
we are cruel
love is not a game
we have made a game
out of love
how can our love die
if it’s written
in these pages
even after the hurt
the loss
the pain
the breaking
your body is still
the only one
i want to be
undressed under
the night after you left
i woke up so broken
the only place to put the pieces
were the bags under my eyes
stay
i whispered
as you
shut the door behind you
i am confident i am over you. so much that some mornings i wake up with a smile on my face and my hands pressed together thanking the universe for pulling you out of me. thank god i cry. thank god you left. i would not be the empire i am today if you had stayed.
but then.
there are some nights i imagine what i might do if you showed up. how if you walked into the room this very second every awful thing you’ve ever done would be tossed out the closest window and all the love would rise up again. it would pour through my eyes as if it never really left in the first place. as if it’s been practicing how to stay silent so long only so it could be this loud on your arrival. can someone explain that. how even when the love leaves. it doesn’t leave. how even when i am so past you. i am so helplessly brought back to you.
he isn’t coming back
whispered my head
he has to
sobbed my heart
- wilting
i don’t want to be friends
i want all of you
- more
i am losing parts of you like i lose eyelashes
unknowingly and everywhere
you cannot leave
and have me too
i cannot exist in
two places at once
- when you ask if we can still be friends
i am water
soft enough
to offer life
tough enough
to drown it away
what i miss most is how you loved me. but what i didn’t know was how you loved me had so much to do with the person i was. it was a reflection of everything i gave to you. coming back to me. how did i not see that. how. did i sit here soaking in the idea that no one else would love me that way. when it was i that taught you. when it was i that showed you how to fill. the way i needed to be filled. how cruel i was to myself. giving you credit for my warmth simply because you had felt it. thinking it was you who gave me strength. wit. beauty. simply because you recognized it. as if i was already not these things before i met you. as if i did not remain all these once you left.
you leave
but you don’t stay gone
why do you do that
why do you
abandon the thing you want to keep
why do you linger
in a place you do not want to stay
why do you think it’s okay to do both
go and return all at once
i will tell you about selfish people. even when they know they will hurt you they walk into your life to taste you because you are the type of being they don’t want to miss out on. you are too
much shine to not be felt. so when they have gotten a good look at everything you have to offer. when they have taken your skin your hair your secrets with them. when they realize how real this is. how much of a storm you are and it hits them.
that is when the cowardice sets in. that is when the person you thought they were is replaced by the sad reality of what they are. that is when they lose every fighting bone in their body and leave after saying you will find better than me.
you will stand there naked with half of them still hidden somewhere inside you and sob. asking them why they did it. why they forced you to love them when they had no intention of loving you back and they’ll say something along the lines of i just had to try. i had to give it a chance. it was you after all.
but that isn’t romantic. it isn’t sweet. the idea that they were so engulfed by your existence they had to risk breaking it for the sake of knowing they weren’t the one missing out. your existence meant that little next to their curiosity of you.
