I am the keeper of nice words

I hear the anxiety in the simple question

“Will you be my girlfriend?”

My hands are the first to be held by him

Palms sweaty, but his grip is strong

My eyes are the first to read the love note he passes

With simple verses but nonetheless making me smile

My ears are the first to hear him say “I love you”

And when he says it he’s scared and nervous

Because he doesn’t know if that is what he actually means

But it describes how he feels for me right now

And that’s all he needs to say those three rushed words

That’s all he needs to know that maybe, there is hope for us

My lips are the first to kiss him

And though his lips are chapped and it doesn’t last but a moment

That doesn’t stop my heart from leaping out of the spot in its chest

Where it’s been caged for so long because maybe I have forgotten

A few things about love but dammit this feeling is something

That not even I can forget, even if I tried

My heart, is the first to break, because

“Maybe we should see other people” just might be the harshest

Six words ever uttered to me from someone who looks so defenseless

And though it didn’t last long it felt real and I believed in him

My tears were the first to fall for this boy

And as they fell I watched as he walked away and with him took

What didn’t belong to him

And though I wasn’t sure I was sad I continued to cry

Because that’s what I was taught to do when you didn’t understand

I was the keeper of his nice words and while at the time that he spoke them

I didn’t realize how much they would hurt later

I wasn’t told that when someone tells you they love you that it’s not a promise

That when you look at someone and your heart attempts to escape the cage it calls home

It doesn’t mean their heart is trying to reach yours

I didn’t know that something as simple as color and size would ruin something

That had meant so much to me

I wasn’t told of these things

I wasn’t told that love may come in different shapes and sizes

But it didn’t have to be accepted

There was no lesson that told me that sometimes

Superficial details were more important to the whole story

I wasn’t told that cherishing someone

Didn’t mean that they had to stay