YOU LOVE YOURSELF TODAY, December 2024
You are like a shell staying still on top of your life
Totally disconnected from its essence.
Thin, slippery, smooth, clean—
Inside, there are pinks, purples, and reds,
But what shows is pale, like...your skin...
You are like the smooth bark of a tree,
Yet you have no tree.
You are like a thick rose petal, rich in color,
Yet you have no rose.
You are like a wound that has shed its scab,
Yet you have no blood.
You are like a cavity, not rough or ridged.
A single unit; but thin and wrinkled.
You’ve grown old.
You feel like yesterday,
You are also young.
You feel like the skin emerging from the scab today.
You are a leaf drifting softly to the ground,
Like you have nowhere to go.
Calm, still, silent—
The longer your body remains motionless,
The more your eyes adjust to the darkness,
Your tongue loosens gently, slowly
and you trade light for peace in that stillness
Dark waters invades into your core.
The scent of weariness lingers on your skin.
But you have no pain, no sore
Your darkness will now turn to light.
You are like the day.
Your shell will come to love your essence.
You like yourself today
They’ve hurt you deeply—
It’s clear there’s no place left for me.
I wandered and explored your body,
But now only your shell remains next to me
I passed your heart, arms, back, and belly.
I couldn’t figure out where to rest my head gently.
It felt like lying on your deflated lungs, oh wait sorry...
I couldn’t decide from where I should start loving you honey....
I kissed your cheek, cherished your lips.
“Tell me,” I asked, “Who loves you the most?”
You couldn’t choose.
I counted your layers one by one.
I wished for your father to love you the most.
“I left behind everything I had and came…” you said.
The carefully chosen items,
The pains, the laughter, the worries, the jokes,
The coffee table and all the arguments,
The bookshelf, the struggles… everything.
Not one by one; not in order.
All at once, just like that,
'I left them where they were and walked away…'you said
“But what about your shell?” I asked. “Why did you take that?”
Turns out, the only thing you couldn’t leave behind was your dried blood.
You had a restless soul, eager to flee.
You didn’t cry; you didn’t acknowledge it either
You ran away dry, but your blood didn’t stop flowing.
It took 22 days for your blood to stop
Turns out, it was your quietly bleeding roots and your anxiety on top
Once again, they’ve taken their share;
Once again, they’ve torn apart your insides.
You counted it as three or five days,
But it’s been years since you left.
All of it, all at once, just like that,
You thought you left behind.
But clearly, that wasn’t enough;
So, tell me really...how many days has it been since you left?