why didn’t u just say so
James Bowden
Everything seems to continue coming back
full circle, as if there are fundamental truths
with either the world or with me, that require
life to play out similarly ad infinitum. Or perhaps,
ad mutatio. Let us see what it takes for change to occur.
Case 1:
We love each other, until we don’t. Or, until I don’t, at least.
What happens? Your insecurities begin to play out all over me,
consume me in ways I am uncomfortable with. You use me and
expect that I am okay with it. I am not. Why am I unable to treat
your hurt, support you? You present things I am trying to wash
myself of, you induce fear where I am trying to be calm, really
I should love you but I am hurt and I cannot and so I do not.
Repeat after me: you’re just fucking like me!
Forgive me: I did not know myself then.
Case 2:
We love each other, until I must leave. This doesn’t stop the
loving, as everyone knows, but distance. We love from a distance.
You burn me when that distance becomes too small. As I boil, I think
of you first–what bubbles up in me, both answer to our conflict and an
irrepressible truth you must know. More than that, you are she who
I feel most comfortable breaking before, and so I do. My fear, my
insecurities, my admissions of smallness: and you love me for it,
you do, and I have loved you for our sameness from the start,
only I did not allow you to See me, much less Help me then,
and you leave me for it too, no I leave you?, no we both do
and are sad and now you won’t talk to me. You live on,
a series of sixty screenshots in my favorites folder.
I repeat after you: you’re just fucking like me!
Forgive me: I did not know my smallness then.
Case 3:
We love each other, until you don’t. Or maybe you do,
but you live across the country now and our letters sour
and you no longer facetime me nor respond to my texts. I
wonder if I have become too much for you to carry. I wonder
if you’re tired of my pining. Though I haven’t to wonder for long;
for you tell me this explicitly, on paper! Me, a self-absorbed narcissist,
and you, fine and peachy and unbothered and certainly not empathetic
enough to be gentle, constructive, to try to See and Help. I am all anger
and broken heartbeats, though not for so long. You send me your blog.
And right before my eyes: your own gross admissions of self-centered
bloat, dear god, why I mean no fucking wonder you respond to me
with meanness, holy shit, you evil stepmother you bitch of glass,
and how can I explain anything to you with words where only a
hug or violence will suffice? Every person I hurt, I am. Every
person I am hurt by, I am.
I’m growing tired of repeating, but you’re just fucking like me,
I forgive you I forgive you I forgive you I forgive me and let us
just move Forward and Love.
This was an odd poem. It references three people that I have loved and may have actually helped distance me from the third one. For shame. In short, where I meant my poetry to be reflection and vulnerability, it was taken for certainty and judgement and no such thing was meant. I admit that the wording was raw and unpolished and that I am at fault for that. But, at a certain point, just have to keep a dialogue open.