The Girl Who Stayed Inside. Poem by Leah Ayliffe
The Girl Who Stayed Inside.
Hide away
Lock the doors
Too tangled in being dangerous
Liquor, drugs, sex, notoriety in the fall
Poetry
Became everything she dreamt about
Dark fantasies flying alive in the night
It was heaven
Paradise for some while
But like all things
All good things
Have endings
End.
Ending.
Breath.
From something like dreams incognito
posing as everyday life
And where did she go?
Hide
Scared to walk out the door
And fall deeper into the hole of darkness
That she made and crawled into like the best bed in a fancy hotel
these things were always there when needed most
not like people.
Not disappointment and broken hearts.
She was already crazy
Drawing back, isolated and afraid
With thoughts of what comes next.
It's always in the thoughts of what's to come.
He could be her saviour
He doesn't know the power he holds
When his hands glide over the body, the flesh
The mind and soul
Filling in broken crevices long forgotten
Hardened from the past
Pouring over her real happiness
Softened by hope and kisses
His sex and his ideas, beautiful ideas.
They're pretty to believe in
She can't bear to believe in it.
Everything would be lost
Everything would disappear as if it never were.
They never were.
May never be.
Hide away
Lock the doors,
throw away the key to such gorgeous delusions.
Trying to be good like the angel she wishes to be
He knows she can be.
The potential…
Teachers always told her the greatness she held
So much potential.
Potential.
Almost as terrible as almost.
Everything can be so easily lost
As if there's no existence.
No.
Maybe she'll move on.
Time still goes by, but who notices.
Who cares to nurture it
to jump into it with everything.
They all love her.
Why isn't it enough?
Why doesn't he want her.
The infamous he.
and the famous her, who is always on the side.
Love rolls back and forth like the ocean at the shore.
Stop leaving.
Stay.
Or take me with you.
Ending.
Ends.
Breath.
I've found myself in love.
I'm not trying to be profound, in fact what follows is a cliche but no matter, it's a response to the zig-zag tumble of emotions in this poem: The very ls last line is I've found myself in love - Isn't that what you've wanted to say for a long time? And poem after poem has come close to that assertion only to pull back and settle into a watch-and-wait stance. But in this poem that assertion flows so naturally and completely from the text of THIS POEM I just have to say (and I don't know if it's my place to say this but I will!) Trust what this poem says to you. It's your deepest self that wrote that last line. My only qualification to say this to you is that I have been for several years a thorough reader of your poems. I read the colors of your poems, I traveled through their shadows and bursts of light, I've witnessed your imagination wrestle with contradictions and exult with victories, and here and now your imagination gives a still point, a totality, a vision. The rest is silence.
wow, a sexy, scary roller coaster of lusty love drowning in fear that was! A+++
Powerful. Insightful. Not quite giving up! Though the original true love has become detached from the beloved into a demand for justice. So subtly expressed. Her friends will say the 'infamous he' did not deserve the 'famous she, ' that he could never in this lifetime comprehend her potential greatness. And I'll bet those friends are correct. Even higher stakes than that - I look back on similar failures in my own life and, for this same reason, regard them now as a narrow escape.
Contrary - he see's her potential and she doesn't know how to fulfill it.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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5/4/2024 5:40:31 PM # 1.0.0.1119
We accept the love we think we deserve. I was involved with a girl some years ago that was trying constantly to convince me that I was good enough for her. I had put her on an unreachable pedestal that I'd never allow myself to ascend to. This poem reminds me of that time in my life. That girls wish for me to see my own value, and my own unwillingness to accept it. Incredible write Leah