Love letter.

I didn’t want to kiss you goodbye — that was the trouble — I wanted to kiss you goodnight. And there’s a lot of difference.
//Ernest Hemingway

---

I always wanted you to
write me a love letter.
But, I guess I’ll have to settle
with you telling me just how
much you once loved me
and how
now
you love her better.

And hey, I promise I’m not bitter.
Cuz, honestly, I bet her
smile it never slips –
Like mine always used to
when you told me what you wished:
that I was more assertive,
picture perfect
image of a girl,
who could motivate
and compensate
for what you never were.

I thought you needed space and time
to make it all okay;
turns out you needed shame and lies
to help you get away.
And now I hear
Your earnest words
asking me to be honest.
And I’m so kind I won’t bring up
the monster that sprang up among us.

Well here’s some of that honesty
that you claim to love so much:
In your hands I realized that honesty
was just another word –
for hurting one another,
just another way to burn.
Cuz honesty, it honestly
was just another way
to excuse just another
of your
honest mistakes.

All that I didn’t want.

 I suppose in the end it’s almost too easy to look back and say what you should have done, how you might have changed things. What’s harder – what’s much, much harder – is to accept what you actually did do.
//Peter Hook

---

I have already decided
not to be honest about it all.
The honesty would kill you, I reason to myself.
I plan out every moment of the conversation.
I convince myself that honesty is not always the best policy;
that they also say how much the truth can hurt, too.
And isn’t that what I want? To hurt you in the least possible way
(I ignore that niggling voice in my head
that screams about how much I’ve hurt you already.)

Later, when all my pretty plans come crashing down,
and I wring myself out of all the things I could have said –
wishing that I hadn’t been struck so dumb by the enormity of your question
(later knowing that at least in this one last moment,
we’d finally both gotten what we’d deserved all along) –
I realize that the truth reads like empty lines off a script,
and the lies sound like the real reasons:

It’s not you, it’s me (truth)
You can really do much better (truth)
I’m just not right for you (truth)
You deserve something more (truth)
I just don’t love you anymore (lie)

It’s bad enough
that I cannot, do not tell the truth.
Even though it’s what you deserve to hear.
But what’s worse is that when the moment comes –
I cannot lie.
Even though the truth is so much less than what you deserve
(and so shattering.)

“Did you ever love me?” You ask, voice pleading, eyes glassy with unshed hope.

A thousand responses flood my brain,
each one weaker than the last:
Who wouldn’t?
I should’ve.
I wanted to.
I really tried.

All the beautiful lies congeal, turn to glue in my throat.
I can’t spit them out but I can’t swallow them either, even though I’m desperate to
so that I can drudge up shiny new ones, old ones, bad ones.
Anything but this black silence.
Anything but the betrayal blooming in your eyes.
There are no sounds but the ticking clock – the judgment of a just god.
A god who let me feed our past with elegant deceptions,
but won’t let me choke the future with them any more.

Sometimes, I think of alternate versions of this story –
One where you never ask that question because I tell you the whole, ugly truth to begin with
and you leave hating me immediately, just as I deserve.
But I breath a sigh of relief, because finally, finally my mouth is not a traitor.
Or else, one where I reply immediately, honestly,
and you leave heartbroken and angry, which is still less than I deserve.
But I slump into the couch any way, lighter than before, because at last I’m not bound by my reviling deceptions.
But in the here and the now
in the truth of the situation –
I am only tricked into honesty,
my silence giving you everything I didn’t want you to hear.
And as you leave, betrayed and blindsided, I am crushed by my own foolish, traitorous heart
burdened by the knowledge that I could never, and now will never, give you the honesty that you deserve.

A minor key.

You are all the best parts of all the songs I love.
//Iain S. Thomas, I wrote this for you

---

You are not my home or my safe place.
You are not the body I reach for unconsciously in the night
when I’ve had a bad dream and my heart is racing.
You are not the face I look into for reassurance,
or the one whose hands I can trace without once looking up.

You are not my Waterloo or my Alamo.
You are not the trainwreck or my sinking ship.
You will never be ground zero
in the disaster that is  my heart –
no survivors found.

No, you are Taylor Swift
as her voice crests to the crescendo of the strings,
and I am
shining like fireworks
over your sad, empty town.
You are Florence Welch
venting at how hard it is
to dance with the devil on your back
reminding me, voice blazing through the radio
over and over again to shake it off.
You are the cool smugness of Beyonce declaring that
You must not know about me
that
I can have another you in a minute.
You are Gloria Gaynor as she triumphantly proclaims
at karaoke bars or alone in cars
Oh no, not I.
I will survive. 

You are all the best parts
of all the songs I love to sing
that remind me that loving you
was never any thing
worth writing songs about.