Midnight Musings

Featured

The worst kind of love.

I’d rather be anyone else

If it meant you’d look at me

The way I look at you.

The worst kind of love is jealous love.

I’ve been there- and always seem to end up there- in that place where I’m just not the one. I overshoot my expectations, wind up wanting what I can never have. The wrong choice starts to look like the right one. Everything is out of reach, but I swear I can feel my fingers brushing up against it.

I’m a fool, maybe, for holding out hope on this. Each and every day I wake up and wait for you to notice me. I wait for you to look in my eyes and see the love there, the unbeatable passion, and realize how perfect we’d be. It’s a toxic, dangerous mindset, and it’s always getting me into trouble.

And so there I am, pining away, when the true heartbreak hits. Someone else enters the picture, and it hurts. You stare at them too long, laugh a little louder at their jokes, and it hurts. You look at them the way I look at you, with love and joy and contentment.

Naturally, that’s where the jealousy comes in, and right with it the self-hatred. I want to be someone else, don’t want to be myself. It’s a horrible, horrible way to feel.

The worst kind of love is jealous love. It might as well not be love at all. Insecurity, pain, anger, sadness; all the emotions love is supposed to chase away, and instead they come knocking at my door.

It’s how I knew you weren’t the one. If we were in love, meant to be, truly the great pair I’d made us out to be, it wouldn’t feel like this. Real love builds out of kindness, respect, and caring. Real love builds out of peace and acceptance. It doesn’t come from frustration and angry glares across the room.

I understand them, the signs that tell me to move on. They’re logical, helpful even, and I pay them mind. But, no matter how convincing they are, my heart stays rooted in place. This troubled love keeps a hold on my soul, rotten and cold.

I’d rather be anyone else

If it meant you’d look at me

The way I look at you.

Featured

I’m always falling.

I’m always falling in love with the wrong people.

The people I can’t have, the people who can’t have me. The people who look at me and see nothing, or see too much. The people who can only love a person half-way.

I’m a sucker for a broken soul. A soul that hurts and opens up to me, but never expects me to fall. Never falls back.

I wish I could fall for the right people. For the people who look at me and see something desirable, something worth noticing. They love me and it hurts, because I can’t stand to hurt them.

But I never fall for the right people. I’m always breaking my own heart, chasing after the empty pathways. It’s terrifying, knowing the lengths I’ll go to torture myself.

I’m always falling for the wrong people.

Featured

Girl.

I’m not the sad girl.

I’m the girl you can rely on. I’m the girl who’ll listen to your stories and always laugh at the right spots. I’m the girl who nods solemnly and gives you advice. The girl who keeps all of your secrets but gives none of her own.

I’m the girl you almost but don’t quite forget. I’m the girl who shows up last and leaves first. The girl who’s bad at starting conversations. The girl who lives in awkward silence.

I’m the girl you don’t really understand. The girl you never tried to understand.

So no, I’m not the sad girl. But I’m not the happy girl, either.

Featured

I swear I don’t blame you.

Your voice gets snappy, grates on my nerves like skin on sandpaper. No doubt you’re mad about something. Maybe class, or another fight with your mom, or maybe you’re just mad because I’m mad.

Why am I mad?

I’m not sure. Something’s itching beneath my skin, eating my patience like a five-course meal. Turns out the monsters in my mind don’t care about keeping the peace.

You’re still talking, and it makes me want to scream. I can’t even hear your words over the whispering in my brain. One hissing voice, stacked onto another, and then another. I know I can breathe, but it feels like I can’t. You haven’t even noticed.

Sometimes, I wish I was talking to the you in my head. The one who notices when I’m sad, who always puts me first, who never raises their voice at me.

I’ve remembered why I’m mad. It’s because you’re nothing like the you I invented in my mind.

How unfair is that? It’s not your fault you can’t compare to some idealized fantasy. It’s not your fault I sometimes fall so far out of reality.

You have every right to hate me when I get like this. But you don’t. Your voice just gets a little tighter, your words a little louder, your sighs a bit deeper.

I bet there’s a version of me in your head that never acts like this. That doesn’t get grumpy for no reason, that isn’t selfish. I wouldn’t blame you if you left me for her.

I wouldn’t blame you at all.

Featured

Work of art.

I get lost in the little pieces.

Counting each freckle on your skin, bouncing from feature to feature. Tracing the smooth upward curve of your smile. Watching in fascination as you walk and talk and laugh with perfection that’s too natural to be possible.

Every little motion is a symphony.

I remember you, standing between my legs, hand resting on my thigh, eyes sparkling like a clear day. I remember talking to you and knowing you’d drink in every word.

The fragments of you joined together, make something truly beautiful.

You make the simplest motion, and I feel unworthy of watching. How can the narrowing of eyes and pressing together of lips transform into poetry?

And so, I’m lost in everything you do. I’ve lost sight of myself, buried underneath these snippets of you. You dance in light only I can see.

It’s scary, getting lost in a place where no one will ever find me. Better than reality, though, where your eyes are just blue and your movements are stilted and human.

I hope someone, somewhere, is getting lost in me the way I’m lost in you. It’s a wondrous thing, to be someone’s work of art.

Featured

You don’t deserve my love.

I’m warning you to be careful with me.

I don’t mean careful like you might treat a newborn baby or a box that reads Fragile on it. I want you to be careful with me the way you handle broken things, like cleaning up a jagged piece of glass.

I’m made of something far too rugged for your soft hands. I’m a cliff face, too tall and rough for you to climb. I’m the reason for the blood on your fingers. You should put on gloves before you touch me. You should cover up all your vulnerable bits and insecurities.

You don’t deserve my love.

You deserve a good love, a gentle love. You don’t want the fire burning through me. You don’t want a love so big it’s full of open air. You don’t want a love that hurts more than it helps.

You don’t want me. You don’t deserve me. And yet, here we are.

Featured

I sleep alone.

I’m no longer a part of you.

You’re a long, sleepless night, trapped in my head, tossing and turning. You weigh heavy on me like a blanket, forcing me further and further down. You stick on my skin like the sweat of a nightmare. I’d rather just sleep alone.

You’re an avenging sunrise, beautiful and cruel. Your light pulls us up over the trees and into the sky, blue and gold intermingling in a vast, endless expanse. You’re the pull behind the steady, torturous movement of each day, dragging me back into that painful routine.

Rise. Work. Eat. Sleep. Rise, work, eat, sleep. Rise work eat sleep. Riseworkeatsleep.

I wish I could get away from you.

But you’re everywhere, everything. You start where I stop and you never end. As far as I can see, you never end.

You have it all and I’m almost nothing. Just let me go. Let me be.

Let me sleep alone.

Featured

To my dream-lover:

Sleep like a gentle current,

Like an ocean

Inside my head,

Submerging my consciousness.

–

I find you

Beneath myself,

Beneath the waves,

Dragging me under.

–

You feel so real

Against my fingers,

But you’re not real

When I open my eyes.

–

I look at you,

Awake,

And I don’t know

Who you are.

–

Your eyes stare back,

Empty,

Unsatisfying,

Bleak.

–

I only want

The you I find

Behind

My eyes,

–

Not this hollow,

Shallow creature

That stands

Before me.

Featured

Pavement

Maybe it’s stupid, but I keep thinking I can write our love into existence. Every time my pen meets paper, it’s spilling with want for you. You’re a mystery, but if I can just lock you down with words, maybe I could figure this out.

If I just carve our passion into poetry, it’ll bleed into reality. If I can just find the right metaphors to represent the fibers of our souls, intertwined, then I’ll get to wake up someday with you wrapped around me.

So, picture this: You’re the ocean, warm and beautiful and endless, stretching across the horizon. I’m the shore, waiting for the tide to bring you back to me. Every time you crash into me, cover me up, swallow me whole. I wish the moon would let you go, let you have me forever.

Or maybe: You’re a fire, blazing with an overpowering intensity, consuming everything you touch. I’m an innocent girl, standing still in the center of your flames. You suck the oxygen right out of me, scorch my flesh, pour that raging heat right inside my bones, and still I don’t feel any pain. All I can feel is you.

And yet: We’re in a car, driving late at night. You’re the driver, hands tight on the wheel, eyes trained on the road ahead. I sit in the passengers seat, admiring the lights of the city, the stars above us, noticing how you outshine them all. I look your way and see the whole universe, but all you see is pavement.

Shoes Like Puzzle Pieces

–

I’m sitting next to you

And I glance down,

Surprised to find that our shoes are

Fitting together like puzzle pieces.

–

How could I not have noticed,

As our feet nuzzled together,

Curves sliding inside curves, until it all

Clicked together, smooth as skin on skin.

–

At least my right foot has the courage

To want you, and do something about it.

–

I wrote this poem over a year ago, but the sentiment still stands. I’ve always been a coward when it comes to my feelings, but my body doesn’t always get the memo, and I wind up sitting way too close, laughing too loud at jokes that aren’t even that funny. On the other hand, to feel close to someone, like you truly fit with them, is well worth the risk of rejection.

Thank you so much for reading! Tell me what you thought in the comments!

Cheryl