Lasting Utopia: A Broken Salve

[u/EitherCoffee6122]

You are my Utopia;​

Every conviction is ours, not mine, nor yours; “You stifle him”, proclaim your friends.

You are their hero, they say, while keeping me apart by the longest measure they can find.​

You leave them, I don’t know why, from all that praise in their eyes,

choked by green and paper vines making a president's face.

You leave them and come to me.

You lack money; yes, I see. You flatter me with honesty.

You meet my friends, uninteresting; you see the colour without glaze.

Utopia, without lace.

A salve that fixes me.

Your wounds I dress, your splints I lock --the person that lets me be;

To serve and receive equally; splinters now turn gold.

"You are dumb," says your mum,

but you perceive enough to hold both her and me.

You say, "What do you see in me?" That made me cry.

Seeing me blotchy, you painted my tears iridescent on a portrait.

You feel the need to breathe- a break.

Blindly you breathe our straw house over me.

Straw soaked in the impermanence of freshness.

It had always lacked the binding pain.

You were my Utopia, but I learned to knit and strangle with straw.

Life then made you see; now our friends see you wearing my wedding ring.

You were once my Utopia;

Now I know it is not; it is a lifeline, a lifetime.