Poema Jones

Mayda del Valle - To all the BOYS I loved before.

Part 1

We are not your mothers,

you have been weanned from the breast of a woman for years.

Yet you come to us wounded, and half filled with promises you can only keep half the time, trying to suckle our sense of self dry.

We have become much to accustomed to sleepless nights and damped pillows

have become much to accustomed to waiting for our empty beds to be weight down with the bodies of men heavy with the scent and the hands of other women and we simply wanting to be loved and to love ourselves unconditionally, simply wanting the truth if you can really love us or not.

play Hester Prynn,
wear scarlet letters on our chests
become adulteresses,
cheating ourselves out of what we truly deserve.

willing to settle for less,
willing to act like a little less than a goddesses
willing to sleep with the enemy

men too scared to stop acting like boys  
thinking we can love away their scars. 

so we take the lashes of the insecurities they pour on us
and lick our wounds in quiet mourning for the little girls we lose by the minute

Part II

“You said you had a photographic memory.
But apparently you forgot that honesty begins by being real with yourself and the ones you claim you love.
The truth cannot be hidden.
What’s clouded in darkness will always come to light my love.
You should have known that, claiming you saw my light so clearly and brightly.
I guess shit happens.
I just wish it wasn’t me.
And I guess it’s so much better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
I know that’s some easy shit to say, but I’m still gonna’ try to live by it.
I’m still gonna’ try to put my faith to rest in it,

“I will sleep on dry pillows now, on a bed big enough to love myself in, I will awake these coming mornings with my eyes dry and shining, full of the knowledge I am priceless and worth nothing less but honesty..”

I will remove this scarlet letter from my chest.
And take the hand of the little girl I used to be and say I’m sorry to her.
I’m sorry for cheating you out of the joy you have always deserved,

 And I will wait for a MAN that can GIVE me the TRUTH about how much he can really love me”