Superlatives- A Poem

The side effects of (always) using superlatives

Is that it’s hard to be taken seriously when

You live in a world of simple words

That everyone has heard so many times

Before

And I know. I really do. I get it.

I’m not oblivious, it just seems that way sometimes

It’s suspected

Because it’s easy to say ‘always’, I suppose

It’s even easier to say ‘I promise’

Or ‘I’m sorry’

Or ‘I won’t ever leave you behind’.

It’s easy to say so god damn many things

I just know

More than anything

That it never has been for me.

I live in constant moments of

An ever-fracturing past

That holds tight to half-remembered memories

And every last lost person

Who lives forever with the dead versions

Of me.

They’re heard in the echo of an unanswered phone

They’re whispered in silences spoken

They’re the everything everywhere all of the time

And the regrets of the man that I am.

The one who never said goodbye to his friend

Or friends

The ones who he thought would always be there

To be told that I would always listen

I’d make time

I’d see them through every up and every down

So that never, not once, would it end underground

But it has

And it will

And one day it will once again

But I’ll still be there.

Always

Because there should always be a meaning to the word

‘Will.’

I’ll be there, always.

I promise, always.

I’m sorry, always.

Because if I don’t have the moments that matter to me

The promises I get to make to the people that matter

The promises I’ll never once not try to keep

Then what is the point of the words that I’ve said

Or the purpose of the man that I am

Or every superlative you’ve heard once again now before

They’re just words, I guess.

Just words

And they’ve never been anything else.

But they are.

They really have been.

And I hope more than anything that at some point you’ll see

That they’re always more

And will always be more

Than just empty vast words to me.