I Deserve A Man

I deserve a tall man

You know… those with magic long legs

that’ll walk any distance

just to spend some time

with you. I want one of those.

I deserve a man who

gazes at me as I go on

my rants

One who carries a mini

mentól vapo rub in his

pocket to relieve the itch

in my nose throughout the

day

Cause I get a lil b-itchy when I get worked up.

I deserve a man who reads

to me

Even if I think the book is

traassshh, the light in his eyes

as he reads the words off

the pages like he wrote em

himself will make it worth

hearing. A blessing to my ears.

I deserve a man who r e p r e s e n t s

H e will stand tall

next to me & let

the world know

he is with m e

& no one else.

I deserve a man who will hold me

& make me feel like everything’s okay… even when it’s all crashing down.

I deserve a man who will dance

any Aventura batchata with me

& will embrace my hips as we

1~2~3. 1~2~3. into each other.

I deserve a man who is inspired

by the rage my bones inherited

he will try & massage it out

because he’ll hate feeling me on edge.

I deserve a man who surprises me

with journals he finds during his lunch breaks

He’ll say, “babe, this one reminded me

of you & I had to get it”

He’ll understand that I can’t just write

with any pen.

I want someone who wants to deal

with the intensity of my mind

because I’ve tried being the

mini-size-Instagram-girls

but God created me to stand TF out

& I refuse

to hate myself

like that

ever again

I promised myself

I wouldn’t find

another hoodlum I like

to fill my bag with m o r e insecurities

I deserve better or something.

__________________________________________________________________

This poem consists of the things I’d like my future partner to do or have in my future relationship. I rarely say I “deserve” things, but I’ve noticed I have allowed a lot of shitty people in my life with sketchy behavior patterns. During quarantine, I have been able to reflect on the type of love I think I deserve and things I have never been able to experience within my past relationships with past partner’s. I include the things that are important to me: effort, literature, attention, passion, confidence, being embraced, my Latin culture, compassion, and thoughtfulness. Many of us just let whoever come into our lives, take whatever that person comes with, and hope that person will treat us well. I deserve to be treated amazing because that is how I treat others. While writing this poem, I learned that I have to do less settling and set my standards higher than usual. When we don’t treat ourselves well, it makes others feel they don’t have to treat us well either. Try making a list of things you feel you deserve in a romantic relationship, friendship, family relationship, or even the relationship you have with yourself.

Thomas Benke: Looking Around In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott, in the Chapter “Looking Around,” says this: Now, if you ask me, what’s going on is that we’re all up to here in it, and probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another. Otherwise we’d all just be barking away like Pekingese: “Ah! Stuck in the shit! And it’s your fault, you did this …” Writing involves seeing people suffer and, as Robert Stone once put it, finding some meaning therein. But you can’t do that if you’re not respectful. If you look at people and just see sloppy clothes or rich clothes, you’re going to get them wrong. She goes on to speak about empathy for other people and also, as an extension empathy for yourself. So, in a sense as you try to write believable, relatable characters, you will come to forgive people their trespasses—because no one believes they are the villain of their story, so you have to write “bad,” or “evil” characters from a point of view where they rationalize what they are doing in such a way that it is the right or only way they see is possible. By extrapolation, then, if you begin to forgive and withhold judgment from your less-than-desirable, or annoying characters, perhaps you can extend the same courtesy to yourself and forgive your own trespasses and sins. This, for me, starts to enter the realm of “writing as therapy,” and though I am a firm believer in that—I practice it to this very day—I think I would caution anyone who thinks that simply writing through things is going to lead you to a place of light and love. I am not saying it can’t by any means. What I am saying is I have wrote through my thoughts and my problems and my desperation and depression for decades and I still had enough baggage on my shoulders to supply an army platoon with rations for a year. In any case, when thinking about craft, it is very important to step into the shoes of all of your characters, especially those characters that you see as antagonists and villians. I believe there are very few universal maxims in writing but one thing is virtually certain: every character you write is your version of that human being. Confucius said “everywhere I go, there I am,” and that is never more true than when you are writing. So if you are writing a character that is distasteful to you, it might be effective for you to ask yourself why that is the case. I wrote a blog for Obscura last semester titled, “The Puppy Had It Coming.” The gist of the article was to pose a puzzle to writers. How can you write a scene where an adult human kicks a puppy across the room and the reader at least understands why. I am not saying there is any way to justify the action or for the readers to be on the human’s side unless they are sociopaths. I am saying you need let the reader know how dark the place is in the character’s mind that he is capable of doing that.

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