You couldn’t understand. So you don’t. You think you do, but there isn’t an ability for you to. That would require a thought beyond you that withstands. Or perhaps it’s just me you can’t care for, beyond an “oh my god” as I vent.

I imagine you couldn’t imagine. Because if you could, and you could feel it and empathize, and yet still treat me the same, I’d have to assume you cruel. I don’t want to. I think you are sometimes. I don’t want to. I remember so many good moments. I don’t want to think I spent a year wrong, after so many years I’ve spent wrong.

But what would you care for what I’ve been through? It’s all some big joke. In how you speak about others using trauma you know I have faced. And I froze. And you stared. And I said nothing, weak as I was. And you said nothing, as insensitive as you were.

I’m not weak now. It took me a while, and many people’s interventions, but I realized what was happening. The cycle of abuse. Chains and circles and cycles and things I told you I didn’t want to ever repeat just to repeat them with you.

I know you think I’ve done something wrong, something worse. You don’t care what you’ve done. You’re quick to excuse whatever it could possibly be, because you have far too much going on, as you always do.

I hear you rant to the stronger version of me. the more disconnected and easily amused version of me. And I feel no sympathy for your experiences. Because you feel nothing for mine.

You never ask. So I never explain. You never apologize, so I never forgive you. You never care beyond yourself, so I don’t seek you out anymore.

I may be lonely, and ostracized at times. But I am no longer your puppet, and I am no longer a second skin to you with no mind of my own. That is healing. That is joy.

And it is unfathomably painful.

I held onto you by my teeth.

Enamel tearing, bone chipping.

My friends stare in horror at the blood pouring from my maw,

wounds from a year ago that barely started to scar biting back.

I stand in the pool of it, shaking.

They tell me the wrong you did to me.

The wrong you continue to do.

The wrong my body was aware of when id flinch and bow like a beaten dog away

from joking flailing hands.

The way I would submit to anything you asked of me so I cant even use it against you,

because I let you treat me that way.

Yet around your body in my jaw, I shake my head profusely.

You wouldn't. You couldn't.

You would rejoice in my anguish. Flourish in my floundering. Barely blink at my distraught.

Jokes like barb wire left your lips saccharinely sweet with a smile, so I barely felt the honeyed prongs of metal in my skin.

Until you kept digging. The wounds kept bleeding. The honey was diluted by my pain,

until it was all I could taste.

Losing you was painful. I see you every day, and yet I don’t know you. You look at me with hatred. I look at you like I never knew you.

I hear short tales, where you are nothing good and far from impressive and all imposing.

I try and see you diplomatically. But unfortunately, I feel you.

I feel your ache. The bruise ever-pressed. The expectations failed. The stale shock of chilled wine dripping into the dip of your shirt. The want for bleeding passion and settle for dry stability.

I stare. I can't help it. I want to know everything, but there is very little I can ask in the cage I am unsure how to free us from.

Your mouth raises on the opposite of mine dominantly. You scan like you're waiting for a threat that won't manifest but you'll cruelly deny looking for if it's acknowledged. Your hands are calloused from weight lifting and you hold a pencil funny, and with every trait, you become dominating in my mind.

I won't rewrite my story to fit you, nor will I try and force you to want my narrative. But you don't move away when I press against you, and you look a beat too long when you don't think I can see, and I think maybe you'd be happy to read the words your name constitutes.

You are not penciled into my life, you are the only thing that's written in ink.

You watch shows about stricken love,

you listen to music that aches.

You are a palate of discomfort and uncertainty,

but you choose to be with the picture of perfection.

Complacent but sweet. Stable but boring. Approved and approving.

Your soul seeks elsewhere, but you ignore its thundering cries against your ribs even when you keel over from the cracking.

I watched horror movies until I was done living out my own and seeking familiarity,

I turn on music that inspires instead of barbwires, despite my longing for what I know.

I am a palate of want and trauma,

but I choose to model alternatives and humour.

I am aching but grinning. Certainly a friend but hard to fare. Hurt and hurting.

My soul seeks something it may never have, but I ignore its thundering applause against my sternum for that would require confidence and charisma.

I keel. I crack. My soul cries for you. You do not know how to answer.

I carry my love for you much the same I do as everything else heavy on my soul.

With a strangely blank stare to others, with a hefty memory looping behind my eyes,

with a tongue thick with feeling I cannot speak.

I have the reprieve of work and school. But for every hope and dream, and every

therapy reminder of co-dependency and attachment issues,

I just want to be yours.

August 13th.

I try not to do it. I try to breathe normally, but it comes out on a weird hiccup that no one outwardly questions but I get many eye-sliding-to-the-slot stares from two of my keenly aware coworkers. My heart soothes, my shoulders relax, my smile widens. You do nothing to upset my nervous system and yet I am more drawn to you than I think I’ve ever been anyone. I’m attracted to things I fear, things that are toxic and dangerous for me. That will do nothing but hurt me. And yet for all I’ve heard, all your pushing and prodding at my boundaries, you never cross them beyond my comfort. You never harden. You tense when I push a bruise a little too hard, but you don’t bat me away. You’re soft. You’re kind. You’re so very good. And for the amount of people who try to convince me otherwise, you prove to be gentler, sweeter, better.

August 23rd.

Every inch of my skin that you touched when you hugged me remembers. I can’t recall most of anything, but the one and only hug, the hug goodbye, I feel like it’s tattooed into my skin. With a vibrating recognition that shocks me into feeling something I feel subconsciously regardless.

I remember your arms at a crooked angle, unsure and nervous, just like your eyes and the tilt of your mouth almost into a pout— question and want— as you walked up to me. You were trying for confidence, and I was trying not to burst into flames from the anxiety. I knew what was a friendly hug. It was that same weird combination you haltingly offered: the arm slightly above for the shoulder hook and the loose bottom arm for the waist. Barely there as a touch. And I couldn’t. I didn’t want to.

I wrapped both arms around your waist and refrained from squeezing, from inhaling your scent like it was my last breath. Because I remembered the moment you brushed past me, and the moment a day before you let your hair loose from its clip to show off your haircut. I remember the smell like a gunshot to the chest.

I remember how you felt. The exact measurement against me, around me. In the way I’d calculate the perfect blanket wrap about for the next night. I felt my shoulders settle. My heart settle. My nervous system didn’t react.

Until you left. And I hid the biting tears with a glare at my phone screen like there was anything more important than watching you walk away until I couldn’t see you anymore. You didn’t look back. I try not to think about that, and think about your warmth and gentle adjustment to hold me around the neck like it was natural. And I try not to let that rule me.

But like every other tiny moment of ours, I can’t help letting it live

To be in love with you, I cannot imagine.

For I would have to sacrifice half a billion people for it to work,

though the blood would be little for the price of your laughter.

Your family for they would never like me,

the people that made you feel as though it would impede you in life,

the man perfect for you in every way but the ways only I could feel—

in the tallest lick of flames and warm scent of vanilla— he would also have to go though I assume he must be good, if he earned you.

I stand tall, my bleeding heart aching beneath the flimsy cover of my shirt, and wait.

You hit. You glimpse with the back of your hand. Your words caress. Your eyes hold.

I will not push, and I will not lay my sword. But if you so should choose to press my wrist, I have no bother in lowering to my knees.

Your blood, my blood, their laughter.

You are sweeter than my solitude,

more divinely timed than my alone.

For you I have grown lonely in absence,

and inspired again by the fates to create.

I will never tell you this of course,

but I like to imagine you know it is all for you.

That I am.

I remember it. Not clearly, but blearily as though I'm looking through a glass of water that is positioned just slightly further than reach.

I remember simple things. The way you bit your nail when anxious yet happy, but yet far too anxious about being happy. The way you would stare at me just so, like you could see completely through me without really knowing much at all. Your allergies and teenage dreams. Unspoken fears that I know, in my bones, rule you still.

You have always been the picture of poise. Of rules. Of strict agendas and perfect breeding. And yet that is not you at all, and while I haven't spoken to you for longer than I knew you, I still know you to a devastating degree. I check your accounts obsessively, hoping that it will change. That you'll free yourself. I've glimpsed moments where you have, before horribly retreating into your half-ajar cage.

And I am still defiant. Still rebellious. Frustrating and your antithesis, and yet I still care. For all I have done, and all you have done, I care. I wish for you to come back with every lost eyelash on the print of my finger, every cawing crow and every blushing star. I will you to return. Just so I can tell you I remember.

And that I forgive it all as it comes back to me in its watery haze.

"Aren't you glad you're single?" Was asked of me.

The words left a smarmy grin, following fallacies of feeling and promise.

I think of my best friend who spends most of her time yelling at her boyfriend.

I think of my coworker who's getting ignored for some stupid reason.

I think of my father cheating, and worse, my mother never loving again.

I think of the abuse, and the manipulation, and the tears I have felt from relationships of all kinds.

But I also think of my paternal grandparents meeting when they were fourteen and staying so until my grandmother was nearly ninty-four and joined him ashes to ashes.

I think of my maternal grandmother's love that survived war and raised three generations.

I think of the three young men I saw taking turns tossing their girlfriends into the lake during the summer, and the families strolling the flower gardens in the winter.

This is love.

I think of all of the love I have to give. I think of warm brown eyes, I think of roses and initial necklaces and handmade bracelets. No, I am not glad to be single, but I am glad I am not with someone who fails to see why any of it would be appealing.