LaToya M. Davidson-Perez

I’d almost forgotten about this poem. I haven’t read it since I wrote it two years ago. It’s also the first time I’ve published it. I wrote this when Kenrick and I broke up. I originally thought that we were going to be married in a few days, 11/11/11. Instead, I was dealing with a breakup. It was heart-wrenching. I would spend my 31st birthday as well as Christmas and the New Year with a broken heart. He wasn’t ready. He moved away for about 5 months. We managed to rekindle our relationship long distance and within 3 months we were back together and planning on walking down the aisle. That of course happened in 2012. For the life of me I’m horrible about remembering the actual date, originally I thought we’d marry on 12/12/12 but we decided that there was no reason to wait. So now, I just know we married in September 2012. Bad, I know.

Our breakup was one of those situations where he needed to leave in order to see what he was truly missing. I hated having to deal with all the heartache but if it needed to happen, then it needed to happen. When we broke up and he left I found out later that he would call my parents to make sure that I was okay. Apparently he was heartbroken too and would soon realize he couldn’t live without me. Yeh, I know, I’m pretty amazing. So, Don’t Say It’s Over because sometimes it’s not.

Is it wrong for me to be in awe of my own poems? I’m not tooting my own horn or anything, I’m just admiring what I believe is my ability to capture the way I feel in a particular moment. Discovery is about just that, seeing who it is that I am, the mistakes that I’ve made, the paths that I’ve chosen. Too often I would view myself through the eyes of others. I defined myself by that perception. In looking back over my poems, being in a new space, I can now see that. The poem can be viewed in a way that I’m describing life and not a specific person. And that is how I see it, its dual representation.

When we’re young we often see life and love through rose-colored glasses. Those glasses remained on even when they had been knocked completely off my face. I always wanted to believe the best in people. Regardless of my seemingly bad taste in men, I always thought I saw more to them than was actually there. I loved with both the expectation of being loved in return and in seeing only the good in someone. Quite often I felt the Dagger of Deceit and am now glad that it’s all behind me. There’s a lot to learn in life about love, heartache and the like. I’m glad that there is a time and a season for it all and that the experiences gained in my 20s are now behind me. Now I can reflect upon them and move forward from a place of experience and understanding. Yes, I repeated many mistakes. I was insane for a while, repeating the same things and expecting different results, but that time is over. No matter how many times you get knocked down there is always something worth getting back up for.