Will you hold my hand
despite my flaws?
Kiss me on the cheek
while my tongue trips,
when I say,
‘I can’t look at you’
when what I mean is
I love you so much
that now your pain is my pain
and so sometimes I need to look away
to catch my breath
and hold your gaze again
and move through your pain together
through a long and shattering day?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Will you stay and watch
while I lose my temper
at the world?
Get angry at the crutches
my parents gave me,
at my underdeveloped legs
wobbling,
smile while I give one crutch away,
set fire to the second one
and cry when it burns?
Will you hold me at the elbow,
call a friend to hold the other,
take baby steps at my side
for new muscles in training<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know this is not the me I showed you at first
I know I used to be more confident, more fun,
but you asked me to be honest<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and honestly I have been coming undone
and I’ve seen the little fragments you are made of too<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and I want to hold your hand
despite your flaws.
I want to kiss you on the cheek
while your tongue trips,
when you say,
‘I don’t believe you’
when what you mean is
I love you so much
that now my shame is your shame
and so sometimes I need to hide away
to catch my breath
and hold your gifts again
and accept that I deserve them
whatever the voice inside might say<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think we both know
there will be a lot of darkness
and also a lot of joy
in the rebuilding
we will barely recognise ourselves by the end
grow muscles we didn’t know were in us
but when we look in the mirror
we’ll know who it is
because we’ll see the beauty of each other
and two strong women
(slippery; fluid),
still holding hands
despite it all<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Will you hold my hand
\ndespite my flaws? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-love"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diary.katemcaleer.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diary.katemcaleer.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diary.katemcaleer.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diary.katemcaleer.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diary.katemcaleer.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=373"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/diary.katemcaleer.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":374,"href":"https:\/\/diary.katemcaleer.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions\/374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diary.katemcaleer.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diary.katemcaleer.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diary.katemcaleer.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}