How do I stop?
By stopping?
That’s nonsense.
What if you didn’t want me back?
What if I left and never saw you again?
That’s the definition of stopping?
**** that.
You should stop.
Stop hurting me.
Can’t you just be mine?
For a little while.
I swear, not long.
I love you,
In selfishness and desperation.
But still.
Please.

Right now it is easy to love you.

You crawl into my arms, and let their strength pretend to shield you.

You let me press my lips to your temple and act as though I can comfort you,

Your head tucked against my breast.

I love you fluently,

Feeling your patterns flow over my hands, their weft and weave,

Like god in their clarity and warmth.

I cannot spin us into what we want, each of those things so opposite.

And I can buoy you now, but without you near it creeps upon me again and

I am so afraid.

I see it striding confidently forward, coming down the road to meet us,

Neither a swagger nor a barrel, but

The ineluctable approach of the pain that will crush me again.

I left you.

Couldn’t you have let me?

Because I don’t believe that you want me.

And when this passes, as it must, you will cut me to ribbons.

Hope is stupid but,
It pulls me inevitably onwards.
Towards you.
So I let it bloom

Your hair falls, like dark
feathers over your forehead,
too soft for lowly
hands. Your eyes they live beneath,
the hole you live in
reflected there. I bend and
shoulder another
of your burdens. It is all
I can do. You are
trapped, like a prince in a
dream. Or a nightmare.
In my love for you, it feels
as though tenderness
will tear a hole through my heart.
I would carry worlds.

You’ve done more to my pride than I thought I would let anyone.
And I don’t miss you, but I miss the surety I had before you.
You made the world so much uglier and so much less kind.
I wish I could take back all the power I gave away.
I wish I hadn’t been so weak and blinded.
I wish I could punch you in the face.