Excuses For Why We Failed At Love

by Warsan Shire

I’m lonely so I do lonely things

Loving you was like going to war; I never came back the same.

You hate women, just like your father and his father, so it runs in your blood.

I was wandering the derelict car park of your heart looking for a ride home.

You’re a ghost town I’m too patriotic to leave.

I stay because you’re the beginning of the dream I want to remember. black-women

I didn’t call him back because he likes his girls voiceless.

It’s not that he wants to be a liar; it’s just that he doesn’t know the truth.

I couldn’t love you, you were a small war.

We covered the smell of loss with jokes.

I didn’t want to fail at love like our parents.

You made the nomad in me build a house and stay.

I’m not a dog.

We were trying to prove our blood wrong.

I was still lonely so I did even lonelier things.

Yes, I’m insecure, but so was my mother and her mother.

No, he loves me he just makes me cry a lot.

He knows all of my secrets and still wants to kiss me.

You were too cruel to love for a long time.

It just didn’t work out.

My dad walked out one afternoon and never came back.

I can’t sleep because I can still taste him in my mouth.

I cut him out at the root, he was my favorite tree, rotting, threatening the foundations of my home.

The women in my family die waiting.

Because I didn’t want to die waiting for you.

I had to leave, I felt lonely when he held me.

You’re the song I rewind until I know all the words and I feel sick.

He sent me a text that said “I love you so bad.”

His heart wasn’t as beautiful as his smile

We emotionally manipulated one another until we thought it was love.

Forgive me, I was lonely so I chose you.

I’m a lover without a lover.

I’m lovely and lonely.

I belong deeply to myself .