Love/Control

This body and mind are no longer that

of a fragile, little child.

So why would you have me live like that?

Why would you put safety gates 

in front of opportunities for me to grow?

The world is a vast place 

and you view it with a fearful eye.

Always watching for any speck of glass

that might cut my supposedly fragile soles.

But it’s not as scary out here

as you think.

Things are growing and changing

and each new dawn brings

more innovation and life than 

even the wisest among us imagines.

There is compassion and kindness 

that still exists among even strangers.

Why, why do you choose

not to see that?

You soak yourself in your supposedly

God-like values,

and say “The world is falling apart.”

But you stand by idly.

You are the pieces breaking off

as you blindly judge kind hearts

in the most un-Godly of ways.

The intentions started off well-meaning,

I know.

A way to protect a fragile, growing life.

Well, I am no longer fragile.

And I wish I was growing but

the stifling atmosphere of this

cinder block house

allows me no room to do so.

So I stay stagnant. And you throw knives.

Maybe, I’d like to think, you do not realize

that you throw them so often

in my direction.

Lines that question,

“Will you ever grow up?”

“How will you ever have a family?”

I can’t. And I won’t. If you keep things this way,

I will be stuck, standing in time, wearing down like a rock in a river.

You’re the river.

I am drowning in you. 

You cannot love someone so much

that they drown in your once, well-meant gestures.

That is not love.

That is control.

It breeds anger, resentment, and anxiety,

and it keeps me awake at night

wondering

if I will ever feel okay long enough

to grow towards the sun

and away from this graveyard where

my dreams

slowly, silently

perish.