I’ll wear my swishing, stunning skirt today
because today
I’m going to the land of ex-girlfriends:
they wear their skin tan;
their hair pinned to perfection;
their nails manicured impeccably;
I’m more
like a man
my appearance
doesn’t own me
I try
then I loose interest;
miss a beat
and they’ll be out
those ex-girlfriends
from every corner of the street they’ll come
wanting my husband’s
salary
and all the things I didn’t choose him for
and they will speak to him
snakelike
in his own tongue
not foreignly the way I do
conspiratorially
insinuating
intimacy
and understanding.
What a paean to
self consciousness
and self-doubt
this has been!
But really
I don’t give a hoot
because I know
in all the swirling sea
of ex-girlfriends
that he will never find
another one
like me.
Posted for dVerse Open Link Night. A stream-of-consciousness about self-doubt and self-love. I tried it without capitalising each new line this time. Let me know what you think!
A wise fisherman knows a prime catch when he nets it…
Confidence is the key. Don’t lose sight of your talents and gifts.
I love your feeling of self-confidence in this poem. No need to worry when you are the best! Love it!
Well it’s something it has taken me a long time to build up!
Sounds like a story that has been playing in your head for awhile. Good to get it out of there. I like the format you used here, as it makes it feel like stream of consciousness.
Yes, probably says more about my at-times messed-up psychology than anything else: but once you accept yourself you have nothing left to fear!
I agree about the confidence, Ingrid, and the defiance in ‘my appearance doesn’t own me’. Once they’ve been identified for what they are, those ex-girlfriends don’t stand a chance – they already had it.
I thought it was an honest dive and swirl into the fraught heart — how certain can we ever be of another’s love, or of our own? So much depends on it yet so much we can never know. I think too that poets are autistic in real matters — we so absorbed in the undertones and -surfaces that reality is so perplexing … Yet would we have it any other way? – Brendan
I agree with you: I’ve always kind of struggled with reality!
Liberated by the lower-case! A sprinkling of self-deprecation with a dash of sassy. I love it!
I suppose we always have self-doubt–but there’s a reason why they are all “ex!” 😀 It sounds like they’re all the same, while you’re unique.
He won’t! You are way to unique and stand out above the he clouds 😃
It seems your (or the speaker’s) confidence grows as the poem progresses, almost as if she is realizing her worth as she tells the readers.
oh I love that and appreciate your unique beauty in non competion as i stare at my unpainted toes and nails of garden dirt. xo
Haha, thank you – I actually painted my nails this week but after a few days they were a chipped mess like usual 😅
Fantastically written!
Thanks!
Welcome!