It Was Only Because I Loved You

You:
You are the Arthur to my Morgana. You are the promises broken and the skies turned gray, heavy with clouds. My tears burst forth, oozing a thick, pendulous sadness that lingers in the air around me. What am I to say to you? What left is there to say, but to recall better times of bitter memories with a sorrow so sweet it tastes like cherry cordial on my lips?

Howling to the moon in anguish, I am an elm tree on the exterior - smooth bark and twisting trunk, holding steady at the root, trying to keep it together because I'm just as much of a danger to you as you are to me. Inside, rotting away, picked at little by little by these termite-like thoughts. I am not as strong and steady and rooted as I may seem: A caress just as well as a kick could knock me to the ground.

And how can I say this to you? My lion, my pride? How can I play these words off my tongue so as not to offend, so as not to cause you any more agony than I already have? How do I say these words that I have said not once, not twice, but so many times before? How can I make these wishes true, how can I make a spark come alive, when you want nothing more to do with me than a living body to warm your bed on the cold nights when my soul howls like the coyotes, a plaintive plainsong that echoes through the corridors of my very being, rattling me? How can I say this all to you when your eyes lay elsewhere?

Not once, but many times, I have felt your hands upon me. Not once, but a thousand times have you whispered words in my ears that could make a courtesan blush and a priest bow in humility. Not once, but forever, you promised I would have a spot in your heart - yes, a spot, my love. Something to be scrubbed at time and time again, a blemish on an otherwise perfect life - a spot that won't come out no matter what bedamned way you try.

And maybe I did myself in - maybe I fell too hard, too fast. Can you blame me? You're so full of yourself sometimes, your life so full of promise as you look onward past me, toward her, toward your new life, that you fail to see what you leave behind: and listen close, I will admit this only once - you leave behind the saddened little girl who is frustrated, hurt, angry and confused because she is being denied something that worked so well, when she tried to behave so good.

In moving on, you leave me behind - clutching the tattered strings of a tapestry quickly unweaving around me, the threads pulling and bursting as you walk and run faster, and farther, away from the life we could have had -- had only one of us been brave, had only one of us spoken up. But which of us did that burden fall to? I cannot say, I cannot lay fault. I won't.

My eyes well up as I write this....you're always so near and it stings and pricks at me, my blood buzzing in my ears like a hive of angry bees. You don't even know what we could have been, because you wouldn't even try.

And now I must let go - I know I do. I guess, somewhere, somehow, I always knew I would. I always knew, in the back of my heart, in the back of my head, that you would find any reason that I would be unsuitable for you. Wrong age, wrong weight, wrong religion, wrong touch, wrong love, wrong feeling, wrong everything and anything. It could have been anything and you would have found a reason -- because I am not the one you wanted and I never was.

I'm just sorry I ever allowed myself to admit that I wanted you in my life in a way you would never understand, with a maddening desire you only felt the most barbed, poisoned tip of. I'm sorry that I let myself open to you, feinted when I should have parried, and never ever struck back. I opened parts of myself to you that no one 'fore or since or again will have...the more esoteric pieces of my being and more of the physical ones as well. I offered you the world, but the world I offered wasn't well enough - and I can understand that, I suppose.

I remember those words you whispered in my ear, those tearful moments of confessions, of words not wanting to be spoken but pouring out anyway. Deer crowding the highway, you confessed. And so did I. And those words I can't take back haunt me, because if I could, I would steal them and horde them away, a dragon with a treasure in the most cliched manner. But I am left empty - in heart, in body. My soul aches. It all aches.

My heart is sliced to pieces now, ribbons to sway in the chilled wind that forces its way through my veins, ribbons floating on air where I used to harbor so much warmth and love. I'm sorry for the hurt I caused......it was only because I loved you.