freefall

 

Please bubble wrap this fragile heart.

I’m freefalling. Watching the sky fawning

its love all over the dawning dayfall,

and the ground is getting closer.

I don’t want this feeling to shatter,

causing shards to pierce this soul of mine.

 

It was never meant to be, it was

just like the sunlight crawling

all over me. I could feel it

climbing in through the pores of my skin.

I was stood in dripping liquid shadows,

in a haze. Eyes glazed as I was exploring

the void inside this dazed mind,

then loves exquisite light washed away

the grey, washed away the night,

and the world exploded into colour.

 

The void was not devoid of beauty,

it was a grand plateau of imagery,

like a cosmic starscape, and in the

halo of a supernova burst I saw

the beauty of your heart, and my

eyes couldn’t look at any other.

 

I looked, I saw, I heard and I explored.

Every word your lips poured,

every insight, every slipped line,

every goodnight, every smiled hi.

Every time you layered more of your story out for me.

Every time you laid your heart on the line.

All I wanted was to lay beside

and feel every curve of every word,

like a blade swishing through the darkness

letting the light burst out.

A dawn chorus of colour.

 

I held on tightly to every moment.

Every sentence felt like an awning

keeping the sky from falling,

and to make the heart keep yearning.

I balanced on the edges of lines left

hanging

and the sight I saw flawed me.

I was unable to move.

So completely absorbed

in the beauty of you.

 

Every bunched nerve

tangled within, gripping my organs

and holding them

in a hug that could out warm the sun.

Roots all branching uncontrollably through

every part of this internal temple,

and I felt whole. Full and true.

Every emotion within tingling

and my thoughts will not stop singing.

An orchestra with a 20-piece choir

just to add to the joy, and I let them all in.

placing down welcome mats and party hats

for all who enter.

 

So. now I’m falling,

please bubble wrap

this fragile heart

before I hit the ground,

and let the sound of hope

provide a safety net

to catch any stray pieces.

The acrylic mask

 

Your put downs hurt me,

the way you shaped the narrative,

through flicked brush lines,

with every time you drew me

small, invisible,

weak, stale, insignificant,

frail, feeble,

like I wasn’t an equal but

a project that just needed

a few more lines,

a bit more refinement, 

some parts rubbing out,

to be replaced with

your own warped art.

 

But what hurt more

was when I started to agree.

When I started to pick up the brush

and scrub away the previous lines.

When I fell back down a hole

I’d spent so long climbing.

You were projecting

a false image upon me,

you layered up every detail,

every smeared brush stroke,

I was a canvas for you to emote

with your own self-doubt.

But my own self doubt

was painting it all as true.

And that hurt more 

than any extra coat could do.

 

You tried to implant falsehoods,

telling me what I was doing, when

in truth your mind

was lying to us both.

You saw only the hurt

that someone could do,

blind to the truth

sat in front of you.

But you painted me

with so many different layers

that I was no longer there,

I was just a facade

of the man I could be.

I started to see myself

as an acrylic reprint,

not the me I’d already inked

through my life previously.

 

I’ve always believed

I was wearing a mask.

Putting on a persona,

to cope with the world.

But after peeling the layers

of paint from my skin,

I’ve begun to realise

that the face staring back

at me, in flakes of dried fear,

is the mask that you

painted upon me,

and the true person beneath

is the one happy in their skin.