In My Own Lagoon

#inmyownlagoon

              I.

I let you convince me 

that I was undefined

Day after day

I contorted my shoulders 

breathing too shallow

and growing too harsh

cultivating thorns with

razor sharp edges

unknowingly 

shielding myself

the windows in my heart

were tense and imploding 

from your intellectual surrealism
that did nothing 
but make me feel 
low 

I accepted this strange foggy love

in milligrams, in harmless 

diminutive doses -

quantities that rendered only

slightly noticeable bruises

it was a slow, drawn-out demolition

room by room, just some small excavations

anthropological examinations

of my inner-soul-spaces

Day by day 

I rounded in my spine

to fit into the neat,

unsmudged and

up-up-up on the shelf

idealized boxes 

you virtuously

constructed 

on my behalf.

  II. 

One ordinary Sunday

my whole body woke up

I clicked out of this crisp,

unstained and foreign place

 I studied the quality of the brightness

behind my very own eyes

I’d lost my bustling,

playful and roaring light 

Infatuated with your refinement

I built you a state of the art,

post-modern style pedestal in my heart

(only the absolute best for you, darling).

I’d think:

I could never be that high class

I could never walk with that kind of awareness 

And I was right

I could never be

the kinds of things

you hierarchicalised as refined

because I could never be you 

I am asymmetrical  

the lines within my mind are

naturally off-center, bold and abstract

they bend where logic says they shouldn't

and the same complexity 

you tried so hard to simplify

is what gave me that off-beat glow 

you said you loved

III. 

Time passed 

and I bore a sadness so deep,

a sadness that self-punishingly

longed for your critique

It was the ambitious side of me

intermingled with a hazardous 
brand of nostalgia that I'd inherited from 
my father and my great uncle

(they were poets, too.)

I became tangled  

believing and feeling

that love was by nature

an endless pursuit of seeking

to please a lover

who could never be pleased

a distorted love

that kept me tired

on my tippy toes

a distorted love

I’d grown to know 

IV.

I am 

my old self again

determined to chart my growth

though satisfied

with the colors, textures and shapes

with which I was encoded

since before you

since before here

since before I met me  

I am 

occupying my own space

passing time underneath

sweet mantras mouthed

from self-affirming lips,

ever-shaded by 

cinnamon coconut trees

dipping in and out

of my moonlit lagoon 

I am

safe and forever invited

into the rooms 

of my own starry mind