Losing Me
Losing Me
I am supposed to write a poem about loss.
Like it is something I experienced once or maybe twice in my life and that was it.
Like it was a singular event with a beginning and an end.
Like the only loss one should contemplate is the death of a loved one.
And not like I’ve never fully known who I was because I have always been incomplete.
And not like I constantly searched for pieces of me within the hearts of men who claimed to care.
And not like I was never truly whole because of a father I was denied.
And not like I went through my entire life filling it out with validation from those who had their own demons.
And not like the more the dead bodies started to pile up around me I no longer had a place to hide my own grief.
And not like loving you, you who didn’t care, finally broke me — an already fragile puzzle — and I’ve been unable to re-attach myself since.
That the biggest loss in my life wasn’t the loss of my father or my aunt or my grandmother or my grandfather or any of my uncles or my cousins or my friends.
It is a loss,
proudly self-constructed,
by yours truly.
