A Hundred Miles West

So it must be okay if I’m nowhere near perfect –
About a hundred miles west, maybe more,
But you don’t seem to mind
And I confess that I don’t understand.
 
Because I’m nothing new:
A little girl all grown up
And I didn’t see that coming
And here I am, a little bit older,
With a smile too big for my face
Mostly because I never use it.
My eyes are too many colours
And I have scars that make people uncomfortable
And that’s no metaphor there.
My hair’s too short:
I like it that way but you rolled your eyes
And said maybe I was just
What everyone else was then.
My skin is marred – freckles in the winter,
That’s a little odd,
And I’m dark but my shoulders burn
And the summer in Spain was a cold one.
 
It’s not just there, it’s deeper too,
Because I know what you’d say.
Beauty is skin deep, something like that,
And I believe you because
You always called me beautiful
And the only way you could
Is if you’re not looking deeply enough.
 
Have you seen me, when I smile,
And the manic gleam in my eyes
And my best friend laughs
And says here we go again, another plan,
And maybe I should take over the world.
You’ve seen me drunkenly happy
But you’ve not seen bar fights
And bloodied fists
And crying in the rain because I can’t remember what’s wrong these days.
 
You should see my skull: I bet it’s cracked.
The bones fragmented and spider webs
Playing out from the crown
Like a brick to the head. And I bet
If you and I looked there,
I would laugh and you would look sick
And say maybe it’s time we talked about it.
 
But sometimes I think you know
What goes on below.
You don’t seem to mind
When my mind disappears, for days on end,
And comes back with little lines
And you’ve always hated poetry
Right from when we were in school.
You let me crawl back into bed
At stupid hours in the morning
And I’m drunk on inspiration
And I whisper to you
And you try to wake up to listen
To things you don’t care about
Just because it’s me
And that’s the kind of person that you are.
 
I’m a hundred miles from perfect
And you are, and I don’t understand
But when I ask, you only laugh.
‘How is it,’ you asked, ‘that you see everything
And you can’t understand this?’
It wasn’t an answer; you never gave me one:
Just held my hand in the rain
And your smile was the sun
And when I smiled back, you said
‘That’s perfect, despite everything else.’