Can I Be Real?

Can I be real
just for a moment?
(If I linger I might
start hating myself
all over again.)
I stand before you,
a boyfriend, but
not a partner,
appealing to
your kinder side.

You reach for me,
seemingly annoyed
but not meaning
to endanger
our entanglement.
We wallow in
our emotions—
they seem to form
who we are when
together.

We don’t know how to
be apart. From
the start
there was nothing
other than us;
no such thing as apart.
(Your mother
said you were
addicted to me.)

I try to stand
proud
when you approach,
but I feel “less than”
next to
you.
No alpha male, I
shrink in your
presence, crushed by
a superiority
you cannot not help but
ooze.
Booze is my
liquid courage.

I write, but I cannot
(even with all my might)
measure up to the
abilities of others.
I could never
be the writer
you are. I’m unable
to see what you
see.
I can’t push my
feelings up from
deep within my gut,
down my arm,
into my hands
and fingers,
onto the page.

I am not capable of
translation like you are.
I know the language,
and can grunt a
word or two, but I
fail to
get the words out
at the same intensity
I feel them
inside.

Tragic in a way.
It’s as if the one thing
I do best,
to feel,
is not enough.
Maybe writing
is just not
for me.
No one wants to
read about worms
eating at my heart,
feeding on my
desire
for life or about
gnats buzz
in my head,
distracting me from
my deeper thoughts.

So, no, I
won’t write.
I’ll let storytelling and
prose and poetry and
activities of expression
such as these to
you,
the real writer.

© 2017, 2021 Steven Barto