All I wanted, was to be heard.

It still hurts, to hear you miss me, you know.
Even though
You pushed me away
Even though
You called me a liar
Even though
You were the one
Who called me a coward,
And closed the door.

Or maybe,
That’s why it hurts to begin with.

I didn’t try hard enough to break it down, either.
It’s like I’d given up, more than decided
it wasn’t worth trying anymore.

Or maybe, it was because I believed you,
When you said goodbye.

You need to know
This is not what I wanted.
And yet, what alternative exists
But this:

You, finally safe,
Happy,
In your castle on the hill.
Me?
Still here, still moving, as always.
Each laboring under words unspoken,
Never to speak again.

So
I gathered the scattered possession of our inheritance
And went back on the road,
Back to wandering,
Back
To nomadic intellectual roving,
Back
To that intersection

Where my footsteps crossed yours,
Where I saw you,
And suddenly
The world opened
Where I ran to catch up to you
And turned away from the chaotic landscape, never looking back.

No,

Back
To that intersection
And turned away from the chaotic landscape, never looking back.
Or at least,
That’s what I tell myself.

The truth is, I always look back.
I always will.
In part, due to morbid fascination with my own grief
In part because,
I cannot distinguish who you are
From who I fashioned you to be
Deep in that primordial soil of the subconscious,
Where others plant
Mysterious seeds
That grow into flowers, into trees,
Into strangling vines
That shut out sunlight.

That was what you were- something deeply planted.
And what a strange specimen we produced:
Part thistle, part Lilly
Like the bouquet I once bought for you
And sent to your office
Raising heart rates, and eyebrows
The ripple of gossip
Interrupting the hum of typing
The hum of boredom
The hum, perhaps,
Of a slowly atrophying heart.

And so, I continue, like Doubting Thomas, to finger the wound in my side.
Was it really all in my imagination?

A marvelous botany, it was, we studied.
But it was not enough.

10 years later
You made yourself so remote
That I, without boat or oar, or wings
Afraid to swim
Afraid to drown
Could not even begin to think about walking on water.

But I wanted to.
I really did.

I’m crying now,
Thinking of that time I laid my head on your chest,
And tried to tell you the truth
But you wouldn’t listen.

But
That isn’t what really happened.
Actually, we were fighting.
From opposite sides of the room, no less
But really, opposite sides of the world.
And I realized that no amount of talking
No amount of pleading
Would make my case.
Some things, never change.

All I wanted, was to be heard.
But there is no more time for speaking, now.
Maybe one day, If I dare again to hope.

And yet,
I shudder to think
What monstrous inflorescences will spring up
From your mind’s fertile earth
To explain my absence, in absence
Of testimony.
Will you wonder?
Will it hurt?
Please don’t hurt.
It’s not what I wanted.
Your questions, they sting me even though they cannot touch me.

In truth, the explanation is deceptively simple.
In truth, it isn’t what you’d expect.
And I, with the power to relieve your ambiguity
Knowing that some lights, are best kept
In their baskets.

Is it tragedy, or necessity?
Separate yet still connected.
If only by our decision to continue walking, even apart.

But it’s more than that.
I awake, some times, imagining I can feel sadness throbbing
Behind your stoicism and endless soldiering
Somehow, crossing through the ether to my bedside
Reminding you of “the other”
And reminding me of myself.
We just know each other too well.

I imagine twinges of reminiscence, as the senses inadvertently rove toward
Something I once gave
Once said
Once wrote

I cannot decide whether to reach out, or push it away.