Love Poem: Self Therapy
Derek Chos Avatar
Written by: Derek Chos

Self Therapy

How could you possibly smile
When everything came crashing down around you
And to forgive someone who would try 
To tear apart your family?

Why…
Why is it that every time I need to be saved
It’s always you who ends up being saved?
Where’s my salvation?

Every time I play myself as the tragic hero
Some terrible circumstance awakens me
It awakens me as this world of waste 
Comes crumbling down

And how can you possibly smile today
When you know,
When you know that you could be next
In this garbage disposal we call death?

You know it has me paralyzed
And you laugh
And you shrug it off when I share my fear
And make me feel like I’m just an innocent fool

So tell me…
So tell me why you smile 
Why you smile when everything’s black?
When everything reveals itself?

All the coldness of your beauty
That you stand before as some perfect statue
A statue is all that you can be 
When you don’t fear what is natural to fear

Your shoulder-length blonde hair
Your perfect figure
Skin just like marble that would knock everyone’s jaws loose
If they could only see you as I do

You drive me to reinvent myself
I’m not the same person
I’m not the same person I was before
A completely different entity inside of my old body

And if I keep changing
I won’t be the same one you once knew
And what then?
What then?
Will you leave me alone?
Will you abandon me inside a shell I don’t know?

And you know
I do love you!
I do love you
And all the exploits you would seek to explore

Forcing me to change
Inside of a shell I can’t know
Is it really you who’s forcing?
Is it really me who’s changing?

Am I really dead now?
Am I really dead now?