SOCIAL NORMS CONFUSE ME Annie Hurley You see, it’s that
I (do not look at me. do not look at me. you
I never learned how to love quite right-
will not like what you see. I will not look back.)
My mother wants to hold me at night,
never learned how to love quite right-
like real mothers do. Like good mothers do,
Not in the way that real people love, with big
yes? But I do not know how to be held like
hearts and loud lips, with
this,
hands and eyes and hips,
her seemingly foreign arms bracketing me
soft touches and whispered phrases.
in ways that I do not understand.
Am I too slow? Too fake?
I never learned,
Do I even exist at all?
never learned how
I do not do things like real people, I never
to hold things, how
learned how to be real either.
to hold others right.
I do not understand this strange dance that they do,
(it is not that I do not love you,
I do not understand but
it is not that I do not love you,
I am trying, I am trying, I am
I do, I do, I do.)
trying to love you, trying love everyone around me in a way
Eyes are foreign to me as well - I
that makes sense.
never learned how to hold them in the palms of my hand, how to stare
(I do not know how to hold you right,
through them
I do not know how to look at you right.
like glass, always too slippery,
never have the right words to say, never
too uncertain of a thing for me to keep,
know what it is that you want to hear.)
always too fragile of a thing for me not to break.
I never learned how to love quite right-
I do not look,
I speak a language all on its own. I speak in a
do not dare meet steely pupils,
foreign tongue of
lest I be pinned in an embrace of its own,
love,
an ocular trap of
(nobody understands it but me.)
staring, staring, eyes pinning me so tightly that I forget how to breathe.
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