HIM

When the world seems heavy on his shoulders,

do not first seek ways to help.

Do not search for solutions and constantly
blur out the names of different problems.

It will only awake frustration in him.

Remind him of your existence and
communicate that you are there when needed
without overemphasizing it.

It is not a ‘man thing’ not want to talk about
it when disappointment is overwhelming and
anger steals the voice.

It happens to all of us.

Therefore, let your existence be his comfort,
your patience be his support,

and your presence his escape from the noise.

“Just be there for him.”

You will not always be rewarded love
for being a good man.

Don’t be a good man only for the sake
of love, but for the sake of humanity.
Love will eventually give credit where it
is due

Every minute you compare him to
another man,

he learns different reasons why he
should pack up his heart and find his
way to where he meets the standard of
being enough

There is bad and good in everyone and
everything.

You say, “You can’t judge a book by
its cover,”

yet you label every book in the same
genre, address them by the same title
because there are similarities in the
plots.

How would you feel if you were
generalized and shoved to fit into a box
you don’t belong in?

His nothing

He says he doesn’t want a relationship,
wanting to close the book on this love,
but you cannot accept that.

Instead, you beg him to look for a new
chapter. You feed him persuasion until
he second guesses his choices, then
use your body to pull a different tune
out of him. You draw him to be more
indecisive, then frustration grows
deeper in you from his unmade mind,
and anger gains more strength in you
from trying everything and getting
nothing. Then, he closes the book. You
mourn, writing new story lines about
him, letting the world know how he is
the devil with a smile and that your
heart wasn’t enough because he is a
blind fool.

When you enter your new chapter in
his life, you write about men like him
being monsters who only know how to
hurt and use. But you leave his story
out. You never ink down that he
wanted a cleaner exit although you
wouldn’t grant him that. You carefully
omit the fact that you failed to
persuade him to be stuck in love with
you, casting all blame on him. You
chant that men are no good, and the
evilest manipulative creature there is.

Was there not any self-inflicted pain
there? Did he not warn you that his
heart would not stay

You say I am cold on purpose,

but I tell you every part of me that is
looking to be affectionate,

is on pause.

It is on hold until I feel safe,

until I know you will not leave after I
become completely naked and
unprotected with you.

“Precaution”

He is not his father’s misunderstanding
or ego, trying to find women’s pride to
leech on.

He is his mother’s long-lasting
strength,

her grace,

her softness.

He is the boy who told manhood that it
wants love more than it needs power

You have dug the words ‘I miss you’
out of him so many times, that the
truthfulness of his tongue when he
says it has left long ago.

There are times he misses you, and
there are times he misses the days you
didn’t fork out of him the compliments
you wanted to drug your insecurities.

There are times he wishes that he
actually missed you, and that, “I miss
you,” wasn’t an overused phrase

If you ask him to describe she who has
his heart,

he will say:

That girl is art;

her perfect lips,

her imperfect skin,

the stars on her face called freckles,

the messy hair,

that inviting smile, the boldness that
sits on the throne of her voice.

You can stare at her for eternity and
still not grasp the full beauty of her
existence.

There are far too many women I
watch put more effort into
searching for the man inside of the
boy, than into finding the woman
they are destined to be.

To those women,

you can only search for a loving
man inside a man;

a boy has to find the man inside
himself.

“Words from the wise.”