Nice Guy

I'm the nice guy. The patient guy. A hopeless romantic that's so patient, so patient, I'll wait until heaven and hell burn at each other's borders. The love that oozes from my pores could fill a fucking ocean with the burning intensity of lava, and I know why, I know why: it's because my heart is bottomless. My heart clings and grasps for the warm, soft, and gentle. Certainly do I yearn for loving hands that won't turn to weapons with nails that're emblazoned with the crimson tears pouring from my flesh, from my veins, from my heart, and from the rot that dwells in the darkness of every square inch of my mind. I scream aloud, for all to hear, that I hunger for love.

I'm the nice guy. The abused guy, you know. The quiet one, the quiet guy, that sits in the back of class and etches on intangible paper the deepest of emotions that can't possibly be expressed in word or touch. The tendrils that leak from my heart, only to be yanked and torn and tattered, are the quills that reach out to inscribe on the pitch-black paper what it is that I feel, what emotions plague me, day in and day out, like an orphan left to fend against the cold. Warm, my body is warm, and I've been told, with earnest, that I'm nice to hold. My heart, being shy and battered, timidly reaches out, with such extreme caution, to probe for someone, anyone, who could possibly respond to such a mind, such a body, as mine, that's damaged.

I'm the nice guy. The attentive guy, the kind who is honest, the kind who will listen. Tell me truth or lie, please, because I know no else. I'm unbiased: I'll listen to the good, the bad, the righteous, the corrupt. Bring me to my knees, I dare, for I'm patient and loving and have already been abused for such a long time that everything about me is eclipsed, enshrouded, like the sun who doesn't get to shine. Give me a hug. Take a knife to my back. Sweet nothings, love, like intangible paper falling to pieces in my hands as if it had poured upon it water-fire, like my heart, polarized to being either icy or fiery. Hey, listen, because I have a lot to say.

I'm the nice guy. The slow one, the albino turtle, the one that hides behind its shell because it lives in fear of being struck again. It's a common theme, I've been told, again and again, that nice guys finish last. The intensity of my soul, the economic worth of my pain and sweat and tears, is somehow trivialized, marginalized, under the immense weight of an elephant--you see, I have a good memory, a painful memory, and here I stand, abreast, with paradoxical water-with-salt falling from my eyes. The memory is that of being aside, unnoticed, a shadow blending against the wall, and that hurts, it hurts in my bones, it leaves scars on my innards, the stress, and I wonder why: Why am I here? That memory, when I was in the fetal position, hiding in the corner, weeping like only an adult can, one who understands sorrow in both mind and heart, and a subtle hand took mine, and a sing-song voice said everything would be fine. Fine. The hand pulled me up and I felt a wet compress on my neck and a handkerchief against my hand that, upon inspection, had entwined in it an intricate pattern that was blinded from my sight, and the voice spoke again, and it said "What can I do?" and I thought, What can you do? What can anyone do?

I'm speechless. My brain is a capacitor that has emptied its last surge into the air, an explosion of electricity, and they say it's fantastical. My knees are against the hard ground and my head droops as if in sorrow. Hold me, please, I say to the woman, begging. I'm warm. Don't leave. Don't hurt me. I'm kind, and patient, and attentive. I'm the nice guy. I promise I'm worth your time. (I'm pathetic, for grasping at love, like it were a lifesaver, the sour kind, and for always behaving like a dog, a dog kicked by his master whom crawls back without whimper.) I read, and write, and am educated. Does that count for naught? (Only to those who give a damn.) Hold me, please. I need someone, anyone, who'll understand why, it is, I am. Help me by being present and only moderately abusive and I'll love you like a puppy who knows no better because they've never had the opportunity, except that once.

It was a painful memory, not from abuse, but from loss. My owner was a woman, whom was kind, and she took me under her wing. Through her embrace I became emboldened. She gave me a chance, just the one, and I made the most of it like a man dying of both thirst and hunger whom finds a mirage, not fake, but real, and drinks with earnest and eats with gall. I'm bold, now, changed inside and out. Inscribed on my flesh are the sufferings of over a decade. The scars have turned white and dense with taut fibrous flesh that needs to be rubbed and rubbed to have any hope of releasing its oh-so-tight grasp. Please let me feel free among those who are unscarred, or who have endured, or who have died. Hug me. Love me. Give me a chance, and she did, but alas after six months we departed.

In my veins run sorrow, and when I give blood, a pint, I worry if the recipient will catch what I have, my disease, my pain, my suffering. It's nothing, my suffering, when you compare it to anything, (even that traditional experience of falling and scraping your knees and hands and using the liquid-that-stings to clean it so as to not be infected with disease.) It's nothing compared to anything at all, nope, and that doesn't invalidate my suffering, no, no, no it does not. My wounds are wounds. My heart aches not because I'm just perfectly healthy, fine and dandy, whatever, but because I have suffered, indeed, from what I have. My silence goes on, until today, where I have a voice (or at least my scrawl.) I have suffered and that is part of who I am and I am proud of that, I wear my scars with pride, because they are me and I am them; I'm a sun without light, a moon without reflection, a lover without love.

Or, painstakingly, today I'm with a lovely love who's scarred just as I am, if not worse, and whom makes it so I may swim within the sun and walk among the daylight. I treasure her as the purveyor of life and my payment, in trade, is merely my sincerity.

Hold me, dear.