By Jeanique van Blerk //iridescent_poet//

​Your eyes glance over at me.

Your shoulders, they shrug at all my objections,

But actually, you ignore what I'd honestly call my depth.

You take my protests of, “I'm broken.” and “I'm scared.”

As merely light hearted conversation of your already preconceived ideas.

You say to me, hands raised in what you think is praise,

“You're perfect.”

Not realising how this only pushes me further and further away.

You place me on this pedestal,

That seriously feels like a bed of nails to me.

Leaving my insides clearing their throat to dictate my thoughts

“Don’t move. Keep very very still now.

He’ll come back for you.

I mean perfection is obviously a prerequisite to loving you.

And if this is the distance at which love stands

Then this must be the closeness that you're looking for.”

If only.

If only we’d taken the time to shatter these idealistic conceptions

If only I'd shouted my objections with a little more clarity,

Paraded my perpetual scars in every one of my protests

I should’ve detailed my imperfections

Leaving room for all the gory details I shudder to mention.

If only I'd told you of my continuous battle

With lustful thoughts and prideful inclinations.

If only I'd told you that sin..

Isn't at all a been-there done-that sort of thing with me.

If only I'd told you that this

Is very definitely a journey of sanctification.

Rather than a once off stop

That I'd made before I met you.

The reality is; you could've guessed, you could actually have known

But you never looked at me.

Not the real me anyway.

You simply looked to see if I had ticked the boxes

Of the things you deemed as relevant

You never dared explore the things marked-

‘Hurt and still kinda raw’

You declared your love without any basis at all.

It wasn't me that you adored,

But rather the fantasy that you envisioned me to be.

And the closeness that I long for,

You honestly couldn't give it to me.

If you ever climbed up to this pedestal

That you, yourself had strapped me to.

Found me held down by all your expectations..

I wonder if you'd even notice.

Notice that I'm not the girl you always dreamed of

And I'm actually only me.

Just me.

Nothing more and nothing less.

The fact that you don't see this, don't want to,

Makes me think a more likely scenario

Would be your idealisation knocking me right off of this seat

Falling from the pedestal you'd placed me on

Shouting all the way down

The things I wish I'd told you before now.

And it's okay, that you won't find me

Right here down to earth.

Because the love and closeness that I'm looking for

Would never ask me to stay seated on some pedestal.

He’d ask me to join him in the mess of our realities,

Dare me to see him in all the grime of life's actualities.

He’d want me to see him the way I'd always wanted any sort of love

To open its eyes to me..

And we’d rarely have moments of I wish I’d said

Because we’d purposefully detail the messes

Where we still needed to let our Saviour in.

Remember it's a journey

A journey our broken expression must

Stumble and slide and stammer into.

Over and over again

Allowing ourselves to knock heads with the reality of all these other beings.

Just learning be.