Listen to the Spoken Word version of this poem
You know how poetry just comes to you?
No! I didn’t wake up to write about love,
No! I don’t want to write about men nor the one who broke my heart,
No! I don’t want to talk about the complicated relationship with my father,
Or my lonely childhood,
Or, the creep I met on a Tinder date.
No! I don’t want to talk about how I was bullied in high school and college,
How hard words were thrown at me by someone I thought was in love with me,
I don’t want to talk about how many scars I bear and how I made many, many mistakes,
I don’t want to talk about my messed up childhood of having no friends,
I don’t want to talk about how I became a rogue teenager and defied my mother and oh! I regretted later,
I don’t want to write about my dear John,
I don’t want to write about how I dreamt of my perfect home,
I don’t want to talk about how much I want to become a mother,
I don’t want to talk about how many times I hear “you’ll find someone better,”
But it just comes to me.
A nightmare, anxiety, an incident in my head from the past,
The voice rings into my ears and I lose all track,
Maybe I’m not quite done healing,
Being broken and fixing myself time and again,
I don’t want to talk about all of that but it just comes to me,
Like an overflow of emotions wrapped in words that just oozes out of me,
It keeps flowing onto the paper like a river down the mountains and I become breathless and start having flashbacks,
Why did he do this to me?
I’m done waiting for that ‘someone’ to come to me but no! I don’t want to talk about that.
I don’t want to talk about my insecurities,
I don’t want to talk about how I don’t look like his Vegas girls and I’m this idiot who dreams of weddings and paints blue skies on a canvas,
I’m this shy, timid ballerina who practices in the dark because her father hated it,
I’m this too smart for a girl but not smart enough for her Dad – woman in her late 20’s who still can’t stand up to him.
I don’t want to talk about how I just call my mom while sobbing alone,
No! I don’t want to talk about my hurt even though it’s all I’ve known but the poetry just comes to me and it makes me do things that I don’t want to be doing.
But, Let’s not talk about those things today, let’s talk about you!
If you ask me how I’m doing, I’ll say “fine. What about you?”
In the Realm of the Unnamed Belle 