Member Poem

Foolish Boy
You are always pushing things to far
Always moving so fast
Always needing so much
You will break yourself on your own desperation
Stop fighting
The waters will become kinder
Let yourself be laid down and spread
I think you forgot in the midst of your promises
That gentleness goes both ways
Let yourself be vulnerable for once
In this life we all have our wounds to lick and scars to hide
Memories of friends turned enemies who did their best to weaponize trust
we all build up facades
Sometimes until our walls start closing in
Which is why I’m whispering please be genuine
Because the safest way to take such walls down is
Brick by brick
And even that is dangerous
Walls have been known to concave
I cannot tear down your walls
I am still building my own
Layer by layer
I build up my defenses
While trying
Layer by layer
To see you divested of yours
To see you stripped of everything
Even mental barriers
Until you are naked and trembling
Panting with pleasure and quivering with shame
Everyone needs these moments of weakness
It’s better they happen this way
When the one that breaks you down will also keep your wolves at bay
And stands guard throughout the night so you may breathe easy,
Body slack with sleep; mind alight with dreaming
I want to curl around the sound of your heartbeat so badly I want to scream
I want to make home of your body, to press against you and forget everything
The things I want are bound to a future not quite present
A future tangled up in mutual need
I would be lying if I did not admit you are as repulsive in your urgency as I am in my honesty
Your frantic hands, your pleading eyes, your begging mouth
How could I not break free?
How could I not return to hear your liturgies of, “please, oh please, please, please?”
How could I not try to make you keep up the repetition?
Keeping you this far from completion just to watch your body writhing..
Will you hate me for that?
Probably
But in the garden of eden you were the forbidden fruit and the snake
Who could blame eve’s wandering curiosity or condemn adam’s knowing bite
At times like these, not even god intervenes until you are spent to the point of crawling
If he made all his creatures beautiful than you are no exception
So let me see you in the light
But you’d rather be a lover that wasn’t
Set on pulling away
Determined to have it your way or no way at all
Silly me to be wanting you nonetheless
Silly me for daring to believe any word you say
Silly me for taking a risk again
How grateful I am that my waters never ran like rivers across your lands
That your words like barricades, kept me from crashing against your shores
That the moon drew my tides at precisely the right time
It’s eid and allah’s laughing
When you accuse me of not bleeding
How strange to think I may have god on my side
That angels may have started guarding my love life
That I am preserved for better hands
Even if they are my own