To Find a Queen
Matthew - Authenticity & Agape
“The older you get the more you realize how precious life is. You have no desire for drama, conflict or stress. You just want good friends, a cozy home, food on the table and people who make you happy.”
-Unknown.
4.26.21
The sunset spread about jagged knives,
She has my veins she has my eyes,
Licorice kisses line the corridor,
A haunting feeling I’ve been here before
If time is relative why can’t I stay?
A little longer outside the fray,
A little longer wouldn’t cost much?
Aches echo into eternity’s touch
Sanity, reason rhyme do spell,
What the old stories like to tell,
Matter and meaning, meaning and matter
Too preoccupied with the latter
4.18.18
It took me awhile to kick the once and awhiles
No longer the silhouette grasping for air
A trial determined that once and awhile
Its okay to say no and no longer care
Scars
A good friend once told me that poetry begins when you tell the truth, so I like to call this my first poem.
I wrote this poem the summer of 2014.
1. If I could, I would have myself in 10 years come back in time just to let me know that everything is going to turn out fine and that all those nights I spent up later than I deserved were not in vain.
2. There is nothing rational about love. It stutters at the mention of a name that you once held on the tip of your tongue but can no longer manage to pronounce. It trembles at the sight of the person you thought you’d spend the rest of your life with because when someone mentions their future husband or their future wife, she’s still the one you see coming down the aisle towards you. Her dad is still the one you text once and awhile just to see how he’s doing. Her sister is still the one you discuss acrylic painting with on Facebook when Lord knows you haven’t touched a paintbrush in damned near 4 years. And every once and awhile any possibility of a future is still what you find yourself offering the occasional Sunday Mass for. Because despite your mind screaming no, …your heart whispers yes. Love is reckless, and my heart refuses to wear a helmet.
3. They say time heals all wounds but what do you do on the days where it feels like the hands on your clock have arthritis. When you’ve tried to forget the memories but they come rushing at you at the speed of light causing you to feel the same butterflies you felt on that October night when you held her in your chest and told her that you were in love with her.
4. Loving you was the last thing I felt really good at.
5. Do you want to know how I got these scars? You see I chiseled every last bit of your name out of my smile.
6. I changed my haircut so every time I looked in the mirror I wouldn’t be reminded of the way you ran your hands through my hair.
7. You know I realized that I was never just your boyfriend, I was your hype man.
… I was good to you.
8. I have this vans shoe box full of the butterflies I felt when your eyes lit up, you loosened the zipper on your lips and kissed me for the first time…. I… think that most of them are still alive.
9. If your love came in a bottle I would drink it until my eyes get blurry and my friends took away my keys. If your love came in a book I would memorize the table of contents and read you cover to cover hoping to God that I could find typo’s just so we both have an excuse to sit down and talk about the things that we both still have to work on….Because at the end of the day aren’t we all unfinished? Don’t we all need a little editing? And aren’t we all just waiting for the right person to pick up our book, read it, and tell us that we make sense?
And I swear to God those typos are the things I loved about her the most.
10. You see I still haven’t found the definition of what makes a man, but when I raise my son, I will look into his beautiful eyes and witness the living proof that God gives second chances. When he comes home with bruises on his knees and a heart full of questions, I will hold him in my arms like my father never held me and tell him that Love is what motivates you to do the right thing. That no respectable man deserves someone who loves him with a half empty heart. And if he ever feels like he’s not comfortable in his own skin, I will smile at him and tell him that his father knows what it’s like to be dragged through a cold war, be taken out of the battlefield, and be too tired to clean up the battlefield. I will tell him that I know what it’s like to just want someone to remember you. I will tell him to never regret loving in permanent ink and that scars are nothing more than the cost of being able to smile once and awhile. That the strongest men have survived the toughest battles. And that if he ever feels like he is walking through a seemingly endless tunnel , I will tell him to keep going, and find God in the darkness.
Thank you
