TO ALL THE BOYS I'VE LOVED BEFORE by MAYA del VALLE

to all the boys I’ve loved before, part 1:

we are not your mothers
and are not meant to be
it is not our responsibility to raise you into respectful beings
you have been weaned 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’ve become much to accustomed to sleepless nights and damp pillows
have become accustomed to waiting for our empty beds
to be weighed down with the bodies of men heavy with the scent
and the hands of other women

mornings with swollen puffy eyes are becoming routine
and we simply wanting to be loved
simply wanting to be able to love ourselves unconditionally
simply wanting to be held and feel safe
simply wanting the truth of whether 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
fast fading memories of playing hopscotch
and skippin’ rope
we now play freeze tag with each other’s hearts
play hide and seek with our love
if we just don’t breathe maybe we won’t get caught
up in the spider’s web we weave while waiting for what we give away to be returned

part 2:

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

should have never wasted my time

and just acted like the man you claimed and told the world you were

made a production of setting my folks at ease with tales of how you’d do all it ever took to never break my heart

I guess you thought you were talking to a roomful of the deaf and blind

figured they didn’t hear you

coz I never saw it coming

but the truth cannot be hidden

what’s clouded in darkness will always come to light my love

you shoulda known that

claiming you saw my light so clearly and brightly

so I left

chasing paper trails of promises you’d already set on fire

left with nothing but the ashes of who you’d written that you were

and singed fingers from trying to grasp the impossible

and the only thing I’ve really lost

are lukewarm kisses

that for too long I kept trying to tune the beat of my heart, a few lies, and stories

about honesty and truth

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 in 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 but honesty

I will remove the scarlet letter from my chest 

and hold 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

to come along

that can give me the truth of how much he can really love me

©2005 Mayda del Valle