Boundaries
Walls I put up for protection
Check my cartography
My treaty lines extend to the north of my face,
The south of my feet
With my heart at the core
Encaged in a tank
Better yet a submarine
That can’t sink
Like my heart did once before.

You see I crumble to touch
Fluster and blush to eye contact

Get back
Get back
Get back

Intimacy is not a realm I’m familiar with.
Completely outside of my territory, my world, my galaxy
I can’t fathom sharing me – with all my intricacies,
My quirks
My faults
My good days
My bad days
My past and my future
With someone else.
I’ve always wanted to have courage.
The type of courage that enables people to love with all they got, to involve all of their heart, to put it on their sleeve, wear it for all to see, like a confession of original sin like Adam and Eve
But without the guilt or regret, capable to conceive
That people will accept them.
But nah that was never me.
Born shy,
I probably didn’t even cry when I descended down that canal and out into the world.
I bet I blushed and flustered, like why is everyone looking at me?
Never wanted attention, did everything not to garner it.

What confidence I lacked he made up for
Every time he made a promise
Until he broke it with my heart shattered on the pane
Of the window as I waited
And waited
And waited for him to come.
I learned my lesson, this is the last time I always told myself
Until he came again
A 2nd chance
A 3rd
A 4th
Eventually I lost count
As the walls enclosed my heart keeping all enemies like him out.

Until
Flash forward
High school, 15
Got those fresh red and black 7s – yea you know the ones,
His polo shirt
His Brooklyn allure
Mm he was too much.
He never criticized nor made fun
Treated me like I was the one
Who could run away with his heart
A ripley’s believe it or not
World record
He played over and over again
“Whenever I’m not around and you feeling down let the thought of me be the reason you smile”
my personal Lloyd Banks
he almost beguiled me
but I had restraint
figured I’d wait
until
I found out homie had touched everything in sight
and I mean everything
shorty to my left in math class
Korean joint I rode the train with
Puerto Rican girl from Spanish class
Girl from uptown
Literally everyone but me
How could this be?

Placed a protective field around my heart
Come near and it’ll start
To go off
Zap zap
Pulls you back like one of those electric dog leashes that attack when they go out of range
Its all the same
But at this point I don’t know who to blame
I don’t let people in – for fear of not being loved or accepted
Or even worse loved but rejected
Only to live with the shame of subjecting myself to such pain
And destruction
Who’d be the culprit?
So I set up my front line, prepare my soldiers for war
Stock up our inventory, cover all our entries, lock all of our doors
For our city needs protection
Our boundaries need guarding.