Tag: Self-love

from over here, love looks so sweet. but… so. terrifying…

and i'm still learning how to be mine

from over here,
love looks so sweet.
but… so. terrifying.
because i don’t yet know how.
how to be so close to someone and not
crumble into a wild mess of love
where i lose me.
the last time i got close…
my god, how i lost me.
so much that i could barely feel me. or hear me.
and it’s the deepest ache i’ve ever known
when i can’t feel me.
so i’m still learning… how not to dim
and quiet and run and hide and tame me.
how to hold my own fire even when
my heart catches fire.
how to hold on so tight to my own depths
that even when i’m tangled deep in you…
i’m still always mine…

and i’m still learning how to be mine.

– butterflies rising

– butterflies rising

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without a fight…

...let me fall madly for me first.

beautiful…
the way you say it,
how it feels. too. good.
like quenching thirst on my skin.
how i feel too desperate to hear it…
but how i can’t let it stay because
i’m too unsure to hold it.
so please…
don’t say it.
i want to have heard it enough in
my own voice that i don’t need you to say it…
but, also… so that when you do…
i can let it fall on me without a fight

…let me fall madly for me first.

– butterflies rising

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for so long i thought if i could just become. enough. that it would be enough…

for so long i thought if i could just become. enough. that it would be enough for him to be good to me

for so long
i thought if i could just become. enough.
that it would be enough for him to be good to me
until i finally realized that wasn’t what he wanted.

he wanted me to be pretty enough
to be beautiful in his eyes,
but my eyes better not be too bright,
and that dress better not be too short,
and those lips better not be too full of lush and love
or talk of too much life for anyone else to see
something beautiful in me…
or heaven forbid,
for me to see something beautiful in myself.
and those dreams i had to find my voice and to spill
all the wild from my heart out into the world…
if i was chasing those dreams,
then i wouldn’t be small enough or sitting still enough as
the sure thing there waiting while he was chasing his.
the more i tried to be. enough. the more i became too much.

because underneath all the ways he needed me to be small,
“enough” is what he felt like he wasn’t.

– butterflies rising

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if i could just become. enough. that it would be enough for him to be good to me…

she’s flowers and fire. - butterflies rising

for so long
i thought if i could just become. enough.
that it would be enough for him to be good to me
until i finally realized that wasn’t what he wanted.

he wanted me to be pretty enough
to be beautiful in his eyes,
but my eyes better not be too bright,
and that dress better not be too short,
and those lips better not be too full of lush and love
or talk of too much life for anyone else to see
something beautiful in me…
or heaven forbid,
for me to see something beautiful in myself.
and those dreams i had to find my voice and to spill
all the wild from my heart out into the world…
if i was chasing those dreams,
then i wouldn’t be small enough or sitting still enough as
the sure thing there waiting while he was chasing his.
the more i tried to be. enough. the more i became too much.

because underneath all the ways he needed me to be small,
“enough” is what he felt like he wasn’t.

– butterflies rising

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i love like flowers and fire… i don’t know any other way – poem…

i love like flowers and fire...

i love like flowers and fire…
i don’t know any other way.
soft and vulnerable,
and wild and burning…
with my heart broken. wide. open.
and even though he came in like wildfire,
he was just. broken.
and hardened. and filled with an
ugliness raging inside of him
and he thought that if he raged
hard enough against me
that he could rage an ugliness out
from inside of me too.
then he could say, “see, it’s you.”
that he could be so hard to love that
he could make me feel hard to love too.
but i just softly left the room.
a graceful exit.
and i wrote all my feelings down to shed
his hardened residue.
and to remind myself of all the ways
that there are such beautiful and tender
things in me… always.

– butterflies rising

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when you love, the music around you becomes the soundtrack… when a music lover loves…

the way a song makes you feel about them

when you love,
the music around you becomes
the soundtrack to the stories you are living
with that person in them

that time, those places, those moments,
it intertwines with all of it.
it becomes the energy that captures what you
feel with them, what you feel for them.
it becomes this visceral, engraved part of the life you live,
the life you know… a life that has them in it.

so, when it ends…
when you have to start unweaving
them from your stories, and untangling them
from your energy, and unraveling. them. from. your. life.

out of everything you have to let go of…

i don’t know if there’s
anything harder to let go of
than the way a song makes you
feel about them.

– when a music lover loves

– butterflies rising

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