Whiplash

Last night
someone asked me where you were
I wanted to answer honestly
The thought that ran through my mind first
clear and present
"I don't know."

Instead I paused
and awkwardly answered
"No longer with me."
A simple truth
with complicated intonations.

Everyone says they are sorry...at first.
I am and I'm not.
I wasn't enjoying this any longer.
I was holding onto the memory of your core
when I knew you better.
It was what was allowing me
to keep seeing you through all the changes we both went through.
The outfit could change, more years gracing your face,
but I saw your smile clear and present in each moment and found a way
to marry the past with the present to birth a future in my mind's eye.
Can you fault me for that?

I find this space in time to look back on things clearly obnoxious though
the last six months of rejection after rejection
has left some rather stinging wounds in its wake.
And you keep rubbing salt in them anyway.
I hid you from my view, but you show up in the main feed anyway.
You show up when you talk to my friends.
And nothing you say has really upset me so far
aside from butting into my circle of friends.

Friends you have never really fostered anything beyond
slight acquaintance anyway.
I wonder why you keep holding onto them.
I wonder when you will move on.
I'm aware you could call me a hypocrite for doing the same
but there are some people I have in fact fostered some connections with
independent from you
that for the meantime I am content to keep up.
That connection to them, in reality has nothing to do with you.

But I have trouble understanding why you choose to contact the friends of mine
that you do. There's really nothing there for you anyway, and when you move on physically from this space, so will they, and you won't have much of anything to tie each other together.

Speaking of moving,
I am aware you're looking at grad school on the east coast.
I'm happy for you, I actually don't mourn that one bit.
There was a peace in that news I found settling.
Good, things are as they should be, we are free to
go our own ways.
I want you to go out and find more of yourself
so you have more to give to other people you meet.

But the Francis Sage poem I saw crawl into my main feed today
that was bullshit.
Forgive me being self centered but a break up poem like that
is that not supposed to represent how you feel about this situation?
And you are free to process in any way you choose.
But that, so publicly, and that specific poem.
What a callous slap in the face.

I didn't attach any illusions to you.
I didn't attach expectations that weren't warranted
only hopes I heard you mirror back to me at one point.
And I resent you for breathing that suggestion into existence
through spoken word...my own art form.

Like that wouldn't hurt me?
Are you really that naive?
Have you already forgotten who I am
and who I am meant to be that you would throw that
into my own face?

And the end of that piece
calling the antagonist shit?
Is that a knock against me or you?
I never called you shit.
I've actually never said you aren't capable of getting what you want
or going where you want to.
I just called it like it was.
I just tried to inject some real world reality into these dreams you had
not to stop you from pursuing them, even if that meant without me,
but rather so that you could truly achieve them.

I have never wanted to strip you away from what is truly you
or your own destiny.
You are you, I've been acutely aware of that
from the moment I met you.

And my mistake in this relationship
was one to try to help you see what I saw in you
so that you could embrace the life you wanted
no matter what that held for you.
You could do that on your own all along, and you have.
The second was to buy into sugary sweet promises
of forever, when the first things I wrote to you
were that we had some work to do for/with each other in the now
and then we should move on.

I was mistaken with the original application
saying I wasn't capable of love,
I know that now this is part of what you were meant to teach me.
But you're hanging a lot of weight on a dead horse
if you mean to pass off on me like I trapped you in this.

I never trapped you in this
I asked you to join me if you wanted to
after you lured me in.
And maybe that's all it was to you
a challenge you couldn't back away from
saw something in me remarkable enough to say
yes to for the moment and fall head over heels.
Perhaps that is what I did too in the end.

But I don't appreciate the backlash from you on this.
Especially when I tried to give you my best always, it wasn't
always perfect but it was me.
And you calling me delusional when I tried to break up with you
that, that is the heart of the problem.

Please stop projecting your issues onto me.
I obviously wasn't delusional if I told you I sensed you wanting to go
and wanted to have you go.
You were the one that kept saying you wanted to stay
until the static of your fantasy world
collided with the impossibility of your reality.

You were the one that was upset when I told you I had to rethink this
after you told me the direction you were headed in.
A direction you again, had kept secret from me, only delineating the meager outline
but never fleshing it out fully-
own up to the fact that you did that.

Please don't lay that on me while you listen to bitter spoken word poems.
Please don't expect me not to see that as a glaring "fuck you" to me.
And please don't mock the fact that yes, I need more time.
I am still hurting. I am healing, but I am still hurting.
And I find that after all the support and love and yes sacrifice
I have given to you over the years,
you acting like this is just selfish.

And the lines in there about how you would never come back
betray everything you have said to me thus far.
But they don't betray your actions, that's for damn sure.
I have never known you to be anything but a good sprinter when the chase
got too thick, when the time started running out on you, in an effort to be the first out the door and not the one left standing before an empty finish line.
So if you feel more comfortable being a coward, if that's how you function, I suppose you should continue.

I am only taking my time so the final parting doesn't have to be cliches
borne of high school and melodrama.
I'd like to be grown up about this.
I believe we taught each other that much.
But you ending it over the phone,
then identifying with a poem in which the person says
they would never come back
just epitomizes for me that you would rather run headlong
into fantasy and nostalgia then be real and brave.
Face the music you composed so to speak
and learn it's not all badness on the other side.

I would have liked to imagine that many years down the line
we could have been friendly to each other.
Thrown away the impossibility of love realized between us,
moved on, been adults about this and let it go instead of holding onto the pain forever, found better partners more suited to us,
and still been able to share a friendship.

What I had with you as a lover, and a best friend
meant more to me than would warrant just simply throwing away
because I refused to move on from the pain of the past.
And yes, you've hurt me quite a great deal in the course of this relationship
but not so much for me to see that as something that wouldn't fade away.

I mean...that's not entirely true.
I think on some level I would always see you as a kind of silly wrecking ball
but that's part of your charm, the ability to be a catalyst for others to change.
But I think eventually, so much of me would be fortified and gratified with having moved on from this cat and mouse shit that I would not have feared the effects of your orbit any longer.

I mean why would a jackhammer fear a wrecking ball anyway?
We have different purposes, but we function in kind.
I mean that's what I attribute the length of this experiment to in all honesty anyway.
And if you're trying to communicate some poetic truth backinto my face
after having read my poems recently,
then don't.
Don't hold onto that pain.
Let it go.
That's why I'm writing about it.
That's why I'm performing it.

To speak the condition into existence and then let it go.
So please, be more like the you I actually know,
be kind to yourself and to me.
Let it go, and stop cluttering up the interim
with convoluted poetry that doesn't reflect the truth
only the pain.

Because I have had enough of pain
and I'd like to just remember you in love and friendship
and not acrimony.