you used to stroke my hair
when i would cry.
i used to cry a lot back then,
vulnerabality was autonomous,
i never tried to be frail or naive-
i just was.

you used to tell me i was
a diamond in the rough,
and i believed you.
stupidly, i fell for each of your lines
that gave me hope there was an escape
to closed doors and unfinished walkways.

i never knew that you would leave me cold,
hanging on to shirt-tails, and begging to be held.

i am the symbol of everything your mother
tells you not be, cowering like a wounded puppy
waiting to be kicked around, forgotten.

after you, i still got by.
i'd meet them at parties and woo them with my womanhood.
they'd drive me home in their beat up cars,
and hang around well after their hard-ons.

i don't know what made me intriguing.
they all thought they could make me theirs,
and my resistance was just a cover.
susceptibility to self-destruction
is sexy when you can't say no.

and they all seemed to think that i could change them.
they all came to me with expectation,
that past the missionary postion
and the enebriated conversation,
i would make them better men,
and i could be their project.

dissect my pretty little head
and tell me what you see.
i'd like to know what lies under
the fast judgement and hasty attraction to me.

you used to stroke me hair when i would cry.
but i don't cry anymore.

i've toughened up into the harder image
you wanted me to be, with longer hair and darker eyes.
more inhibitions, less naivete, unrelenting regret
and unchartered territories of unnavigated hurt.

i tried to make fillers out of one-night stands
and indelible decisions.
i've so carefully woven pretexts of my personality
so they won't know who i really am.
i'm afraid that once they've found me out
i'll get abandoned again, nothing left to hold on to
after they learn that i'm boring, damaged goods.

(i'm so afraid to be boring
but i'm uninterested in myself.)

but i'm still me.
shaking under the covers
where you left your imprint in my bed
after you told me you'd never leave me.

and i'm still trying to convince myself
that i was the diamond
and you were the rough.

but if diamonds never break,
why am i so broken?

03/06/2005

Posted on 03/06/2005
Copyright © 2024 Lauren Singer