Poem: Can You Hear My Voice This Time?

“But we are looking for the same thing,

At the end of the day – we are all…”

You cannot finish your sentence, because

You’re too terrified of what you’ll hear now.

You worry about the next words that will greet you

Because it could the soft balm that would heal your aching soul

Or the harshest ones that will rip your heart into pieces again!

You can never be sure about where you stand,

Because this ground that you stand so firmly on –

It could be taken away from you in the blink of an eye!

You’re too scared to reach out your hand, to even touch 

You’re too afraid that to give that hug because you cannot be sure

Of what could happen next.

What could happen next ranges from the fairy tale ending

To the harsh reality where no one ends up together!

But you’re too terrified to speak, you cannot speak.

You open your mouth to let out a whisper, and to your surprise

Comes out this blood churning scream

And the broken girl who could never speak out before asks –

Well, can you hear my voice this time?

Some well-meaning person tries to reach out to her,

Tries to engulf her in a hug – tell her that it’s okay.

It’ll be fine now. Everything will be fine.

Sadly, she doesn’t believe in that anymore.

You see, when she was trying to tell that

Everyone is looking for the same thing,

That at the end of the day – you’d cut her off

Yelling about how you cannot be there,

That everything had been nothing but a mistake

She realized she wasted too much of her time

Trying to fix something that wants to stay broken!

And in the process the part of that she had worked hard to fix

It broke. It shattered.

And now thanks to you, she’s never going to let anyone in.

Why couldn’t you have listened to me when I asked you to leave her alone?

I told you that it was my job to break her heart, not yours!

But you didn’t listen. Because you’ve never been good at listening,

Because you only do what’s best for you.

Never what’s best for someone else!

I wonder if you know what love is. Have you ever really felt it?

I don’t think you have.

Because you can flit from one person to the next, 

leaving a trail of heartbreaks

And hurt on that map that will lead 

to the loneliest of islands

Where you alone reside!

You shouldn’t have scared her. 

You should have let her tell you what she started

To say –

In the end, we all just want the same thing. Arms that will hold us tight,

And people who will keep choosing us, over and over, and over again.

But it’s frightening when both want the shelter from the storms of life,

Yet neither knows how to be that same shelter.

That girl that didn’t speak all those years ago, 

the girl that was terrified of her own voice,

I can her screams now, echoing the same question, 

over and over again,

“Can you hear my voice this time?”

Note: I was at Criccieth Beach. I found my way there after being in a poetry course all day long, and then finally took the long winding walk to find the beautiful beach. There was hardly anyone around, and I sat on one of the huge rocks and stared out at the sea. What I felt at the moment was happiness, sadness, the feeling of being utterly broken and wonderfully whole again. I was feeling completely overwhelmed, and I remember writing a message to someone I thought meant a lot to me.  As I was going through the pictures from the trip to Wales, I remembered the afternoon all too well and the message that has gone unanswered. And here I am, with a new poem called "Can You Hear My Voice This Time?" My friends back in Wales would be so proud of me right now!