POEM - Internal Parley

We are allowed to love ourselves

Talk about a lesson worth learning

Few things spring to the front

of my self-maligning mind

faster than your way with words sprung

when I found out we were over

And that has to stop

Living what’s left of my days

in an attempt to beautify

the you which lives rent-free in my head

will continue to cost me

my own confidence

And I finally understand that there’s

no reason to think you’re worth it

You’re long gone, after all

What I deal with is but a shadow

of who you used to be

Who you really are now,

I don’t get to know

-hell, I don’t want to know

That doesn’t make me a bad person

We ended poorly,

and that’s taken me too long to accept

It happens

But I’ve been shouldering all of the blame;

still trying to protect someone who

didn’t just leave—they scrubbed

any hint of me clean out of their reality

And there are things about myself

I can try to improve on as a result

But someone else’s eraser

does not, ourselves, erase

If we care enough to do

any self-reflection in the face of loss,

that should say plenty

to other people like us

that people like us are not monsters

Losers, perhaps,

but some losses are the biggest wins

And too many of us

fail understanding as much

We get so lost in championing

those we love (or have tried to)

that we forget to cheer for ourselves

And a hollow outline

of who we set out to be

is no way to go through life

For the void does not offer;

all it knows how to do is take

So trust yourself while on the way

to sorrow’s exit

Because no matter who you lose,

or how many people seem to hate you,

there is only one person in the world

guaranteed to always be there;

it’s that someone you see

in every mirror