I suppose I could be mad. You sideswiped my confidence, but I allowed you to gift it to me. You pickpocketed my vanity, but I did dress it up for you.

I could be mad.
But that’s an excuse,

So
I think I should be angry instead that I gave you an invitation, or maybe what I gave you was more like a ticket.

Because
I keep breaking off pieces of myself as if I had perforated lines, and I still don’t know what love feels like.

Also it’s kinda messed up that
Kindness from any man feels like sunburn. Like on long summer days when the sun feels so good on your soul, you forget you have skin. Until the sun says it’s getting late, and you’re alone. My soul doesn’t mind the third degree but will cling to happiness when it can. The burn becomes a settling sediment, warmth in my memories.

I have to be cold to you

Because
I once let a man gouge a whole in my chest, and I can’t keep jabbing other men’s fingers in the wound.

But
No excuses

I keep aiming to feel hopelessness like it’s love again. I mean to say I’m a collector of damage, and I call it collateral. But what I am trying to say is I use damage to hold up to my my self worth’s reflection. (Make believe it’s a mirror).

Because
It’s easier to write off my existence, like it’s easier for me to write off yours.

So
It’s true
I would rather be kind to you, but I don’t know how to, see I knew what you had in mind, and I still gave you that ticket.
But I still gave you that ticket.
So, when I look at you (for too long), my soul is reminded there is a piece missing, and you did not think it difficult to part with. You didn’t  tuck away that piece, like a stub in your wallet for a good memory, a smile while buying cigarettes. And now it’s just garbage. And I am reminded there are 10 men who have no idea where my souls been misplaced. 10 tickets dissolving in rancid orange juice and egg whites.

Speaking of empty shells.
A broken vessel.
You, a bright mind formed from the stars, have developed a tremor. And I like to imagine it’s because the galaxies you’re forged from could not be contained on this planet. And so smooth gold light seeps from your just being, and touches all the people close to you. Your starlight is a barrel fire on this cold forgotten planet. The starless soak in your light, and rekindle their own flames.

You would have been too bright for this world, in this lifetime.

So
The universe delivered you a hammerblow, and took back one of your stars. And you, still shuttering from the impact, don’t dare shed light on things with the potential to be temporary, which you have decided is everything.

That is not an excuse

You had to replace a part of yourself.

And, so
You made your own stars. That does not make you whole. Man made pieces of a soul are sure to be clunky and incongruous. But you did cover the hole in your chest. (And years later, still quacking from that blow, you still can’t stop yourself from pouring light through your fractures.)

I write this
Because  
People can’t be forgotten, only discarded, and memories recollected in spite of ourselves. That is to say you are indelible. That crack the universe left, not a fault line, but a story. A story about how you remain so relentlessly, unapologetically whole. I know you feel like shards of glass. But your just being reminded me there are stars worth finding.

With a lack of direction, you’ve made your way closer to your path than most ever get. You are resilient. I wish I could have reflected the light in your eyes to the crack in your vessel, so you would understand how my glass shards felt whole.