Soft in the Middle

by Shelby Eileen

how do you tell the one you love you think you’d be better off without them?

how do you mourn the loss of a love you never spoke out loud never felt with your own two hands?

your eyes are so beautiful through them, I bet the world is tinged with gold

It hurts so much that words would betray us this way.

I can’t look at beautiful things because every beautiful thing reminds me of you

when I’m frustrated I wish you’d never cared about me at all I would rather that than this;

like we’re sitting at the bottom of the ocean sunken like anchors weighted like grief

just because I write about you doesn’t mean I write for you

or is it just me that feels everyone else’s pain like it’s my own?

simply because I care too much and feel it all

I have an awful bad habit of running away and expecting people to follow

I imagine being yours so frequently so secretly

I don’t know what it is to feel wanted only what it is to want

this body is a bloom, always shedding petals

I worry that you think my silence means I don’t need you I worry you’ll never know how untrue that is

I want you to know that you can be soft for me even when you’re hard for the rest of the world

want to hear the things you never dreamed you’d have the courage to say aloud

I think people are like stories and when they write you into their lives that’s something to be thankful for even if it’s just for a chapter I’m so glad to have pages with your smile on them

I just know that when you said it would be too hard to love me from so far I heard, instead you’re not worth it

that I find it so easy to fall in love and so hard to tell the truth

they ask me do you want to be a writer? and I think I would if only I could write about anything other than you

I think you know that I love you but I don’t think you know that it’s killing me

the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do? I haven’t done it yet I haven’t quit you

to dream up their arms around you all soft and warm and imaginary will only keep the wound of that unanswered love open and bleeding