I never requested that you said you love me
but I liked the way it sounded,
the way those three small syllables
could become so monumental as they
slid past your tongue, between your lips,
nestling themselves behind my ears in a whisper
so faint that I could hardly hear them.
I screamed I love you from the rooftops.
Not because I really understood the words,
But simply because I wanted to be heard,
And still all you heard was a whisper.
I did not, however, realize that you had
strategically placed these 'I love you's
in crisp breezes around the city
to be heard by anyone that caught your eye.
Years of subtle love, expressed in quiet actions,
Had left me alone and ignored in this city.
So I began to shout, and like most urban artists,
Sent up toxins and beauty, in equal measure, to the winds.
And yet I never really liked the way it sounded,
So much as I was simply afraid of the silence.
I was too smitten and distracted by your beauty
that I didn't notice when
"don't" and "anymore" joined
"i love you" gently behind my ears,
deaf from the details that screamed for me to
walk in the exact opposite direction
the moment the world around us became too
beautiful to be real.
I was too busy drowning in my loneliness
To notice that the sounds of my love
Had changed completely.
Too desperately attached to being alone,
To notice that you had been listening.
And as I limp towards the moment this world
Starts to feel real again, I stop to wonder:
If anyone had told us from the start
That we both deserve much better,
Would either of us have listened?
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