soft body, hard heart

The people who tell you that you have a soft body
are the same ones that'll harden your heart.

Romance is for distraught wanderers who have failed to do it alone,
yet, are brave enough to sleep under the same blanket every night
and make each other toast each morning.

In the unlikely event that I find a person that knows the freckle in the crevice of my thigh
or that the thought of my grandmother scratching my back makes me cry,
I'll fall into the pit of softness that appears warm, but,
I'd otherwise consider love a risk to hardened hearts.

The time I spend allowing my soft body to be next to another keeps me up at night,
I start to wonder about the nature of my lewd intentions.
I start to wonder if it hardens me more,
if by the time I shy away one last time,
I'll calcify.

Am I the girl with bedroom eyes that can't even hold hands?
Are you tortured, with no tongue?

I am selfish with my self and don't like to think about why.
Have you ever felt comfortable explaining the origin of all the scars that mark your skin?
I fake a kind of comfort that tells me I never will, that it's somehow better to always be alone.

I delve into an alternate romance where being unlovable is more than enough, it's superior.

I'm less of a misanthrope and more of a mountaineer
who keeps to herself,
for the sake of her self.

I can operate out of fear and easily call it a strength as I continue to burst and break.
Safety in a citadel of disconnect can feel so proper in the daily motions,
but overall makes me a sad sack.

I've longed to be encased in something worthwhile,
that doesn't pluck emotion from limbs to drop them.

All that has helped me is digging deeper in to the alternate.

Reviews

[. serah .]

-- i'd been living in near-complete isolation for almost seven years... then something changed... -- the 'self' is a strange thing... it sees itself in the reflection of another and if that other 'self' in which it sees itself is spectacular... the entire cosmos of expression and expansion changes... but enough about that... you post reminds me of my thoughts on resilience during my phase of isolation and how isolation seemed like the only ticket to strength... -- every realm of thought encompassed the notion that there was nothing beyond what was... and that was fine... for in that state one begins to draw the contours of one's identity... undisturbed and unperturbed by external influences and expectations... -- it's excruciating but it has meaning... the kind of profundity that your poem has... -- extremely insightful stuff...

[JMaster1]

Am I the girl with bedroom eyes that can't even hold hands?

I love your writing , many girls wonder the same , you placed your thoughts in beautiful way here

[M. Shepherd]

So much of this resonates deeply.. the pervasive fear that demands solitude, how we alienate ourselves to protect ourselves but in doing so lose touch with an ability to identify connection.

As if remaining soft in a brittle world weren't a virtue -
I realize this piece comments on the softness of bodies but hard hearts only harden from softness - I've found that I still prefer getting hurt time and time again than allow my heart to calcify.

[Dalton]

The juxtaposition of animating the physical, and introspection really sets the scene. There is some nihilism in this piece, which leaves the reader feeling gloomy, yet happy to peer into the writer's suffering and hidden world. Salute.