To All the Boys I've Loved Before Mayda Del Valle we are not your mothers and are

not meant to be it is not our responsibility to raise you into respectful beings you have been weaned from the breast of a woman for years yet you come to us wounded and half filled with promises you can only keep half the time trying to suckle our sense of self dry we ve become much to accustomed to sleepless nights and damp pillows have become accustomed to waiting for our empty beds to be weighed down with the bodies of men heavy with the scent and the hands of other women mornings with swollen puffy eyes are becoming routine and we simply wanting to be loved simply wanting to be able to love ourselves unconditionally simply wanting to be held and feel safe simply wanting the truth of whether you can really love us or not play Hester Prynn wear scarlet letters on our chests become adulteresses Cheating ourselves out of what we truly deserve willing to settle for less willing to act like a little less than a goddesses willing to sleep with the enemy men too scared to stop acting like boys thinking we can love away their scars so we take the lashes of the insecurities they pour on us and lick our wounds in quiet mourning for the little girls we lose by the minute fast fading memories of playing hopscotch and skippin rope we now play freeze tag with each other s hearts play hide and seek with our love if we just don t breathe maybe we won t get caught up in the spider s web we weave while waiting for what we give away to be returned you said you had a photographic memory but apparently you forgot that honesty begins by being real with yourself and the ones you claim you love should have never wasted my time and just acted like the man you claimed and told the world you were made a production of setting my folks at ease with tales of how you d do all it ev er took to never break my heart I guess you thought you were talking to a roomful of the deaf and blind figured they didn t hear you coz I never saw it coming but the truth cannot be hidden what s clouded in darkness will always come to light my love you shoulda known that claiming you saw my light so clearly and brightly so I left chasing paper trails of promises you d already set on fire left with nothing but the ashes of who you d written that you were and singed fingers from trying to grasp the impossible and the only thing I ve really lost

are lukewarm kisses that for too long I kept trying to tune the beat of my heart, a few lies, and st ories about honesty and truth I guess shit happens I just wish it wasn t me and I guess it s so much better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all I know that s some easy shit to say but I m still gonna try to live by it I m still gonna try to put my faith to rest in it I will sleep on dry pillows now in a bed big enough to love myself in I will awake these coming mornings with my eyes dry and shining full of the knowledge I am priceless and worth nothing but honesty I will remove the scarlet letter from my chest and hold the hand of the little g irl I used to be and say I m sorry to her I m sorry for cheating you out of the joy you have always deserved and I will wait for a man to come along that can give me the truth of how much he can really love me