Questions To A Hated Love Poem by Onyi Ogwumike

Am I so dark I blend into the shroud of invisible all around me?

So despised are the forgings of my face that you must shun them so?

So oblivious to the quickened pantings of my heart that you step on my very consciousness?

Once I break may I request your mending hands or is that too much to ask for?

In a way that I don’t care for, may I ask for your care?

When I wince from no external conflict, can your feeble mind fathom why?

Or am I just that perfect in my deception?

So skilled in secretive wanting, that when I seem to shout in my mind; you hear less than a whisper?

If I crushed my wind pipe so that it whistled and billowed like the morning sky whispering a sweet nothing to a weeping willow,

Shaking my tresses of beaded dew and grassy, braided lies,

Then could I buy a glance from your pearls of night time smiles?

If I threw my fattest pig to the floor, and let it explode in an array of monetarily valued hail stones,

If I slapped you and let your face rumble with the same might that my soul shakes when I see you,

If the ghost of reasoning finally taps you on the shoulder, then could you see my truths?

Then could you realize all my hatred amounts to nothing more than pure admiration?