Slime

I've spent so much time watching other people. It's all I seem to be good at.

I like people most when they are vulnerable and small, and they say things that are unguarded. For example, when a person truly loves another person, they don't show it by saying "I love you" but in so many other, strange, ways.

Sometimes, people will do things for their loved ones and never receive a “thank you,” because the things they do are so hidden and so automatic that they pass like sticks in a river, bobbing under and prattling ashore. Sometimes, they'll do things so indirect and odd that they end up making little sense, just because they had hoped for a better outcome. Sometimes, to my great interest, they'll hurt themselves and others for love, and it will consume them so totally that it emanates into the soul of any person who dares to place a hand on their shoulder.

We're complicated people, all of us, but we make things more complicated with our desperate attempts at spinning webs of who we are that we can show to the world. Still, with that being said, these webs aren't always lies. After all, we make them ourselves, and from our own experiences. People sometimes think they're pulling a clever mask over their face, only to look in the mirror and realise it's more real than the face they wore before. Again, I say, it's not simple being a person.

But that's besides the point... You're looking for an insight that'll make you feel seen and known, a poem that'll take you home. You're reading this with me because you're hopeful that we're talking to each other when we talk, and not just to ourselves and the great grey machine. So, I'll give you a story, and I'll make it as pretty as I can.

When you spare your time for a person and see them in ways they don't see themselves, you fall in love with a unique vision of who they are, and you carry that vision with you like a photograph. In sunny afternoons, spent in seaside towns, you see their face under a floppy hat, or in a parked car window. Your first lick of ice cream always tastes like them, and you start wanting to share all the things you like the most, even when you really feel it's quite annoying to do so. When you hold that person close to you, your best thoughts are testaments to them. When that person is close enough to hurt you, your worst thoughts are stormy farewells in futures you fear.

Though, as all wise and capable people will say, as they regard your sappy poetry, it is thinking that makes it so, not reality. A pretty portrait requires a capable artist.

Without the paintbrush of love, a sunny afternoon is simply warm and soothing, and a terse goodbye is a rotten week but not a whole season. Without the burden of optimism, so tightly interwoven, a strange thing is just strange, and a scary feeling keeps you away.

I'd like to say I'm a person like any other and I've lived and loved with simple honesty but, in truth, I've followed my curiosity through swamps too often. My feet have taken me to strange shores... not because I was welcome but because I, truly, wasn't. I like to sit on the edge of the possible and drink from cups I've never seen. I like dirty uncertainties and chipped mugs, ailing bonds and oily pans. When I've chosen to give my heart and to waste my time, I've found it was, too often, just to see what might happen. I've found, too often, that I’ve made an ocean from a paddling pool, and Shakespeare from a shopping list. I've found, too often, that I've ended up on the surface with the bubbles and the scum, instead of murmuring deep below... in the ink... with my betters.