Never have I been the best at hiding how I feel.  There is no peaceful game.  My face reveals the truth.  Never to be doubted.  Nothing left to wonder.  Still, I reign it in.  I stifle my reality in an attempt to keep you close.  So tender-hearted beneath that thickening shell.  The shell I penetrated somehow.  Once you found me in your heart, you pushed with all your might.  Trying to get me out.  I cannot be budged. Yet, I am not free to love you.  You refuse to let me be yours in theory or practice.  You love me, but not by choice.  Fear of the possibility of pain keeps you at bay.  Yet saving yourself from pain has deemed my own inconsequential.  For running from me pulls out my heart.  

Pushing me away
What's best, or just what's easy
Burns holes in my soul

Not one to take the easy way out.  Suffering to love you.  There is no expectation of love requited.  There is nothing but a dream, part memory part wishful thinking.  Hot needles still poke at me, slowly breaking me down.  Weakening my very being with the sharp jabs of stinging words or careless action, or worse...absolute inaction.  I have learned to stop expecting the "Morning Sunshine" or "'Night Darlin'" that used to brighten each day.  Those thoughtless things, the tiny nothing things that let me know I was on your mind.  So far from nothing those nothings were.  Days and nights seem incomplete in their absence.  Weaning to make your days bearable makes mine unendurable, empty, and melancholy has come to underlie all things.  

Joy of love melts ice
Heat smothered by a tear cloud
Threadbare soul survives

Challenges faced sideways leave blind spots. Choices made by indecision.  Letting mistakes be made, watching as they choose wrong. I see the truth and know what I know.  Everything is aligned for my own misfortune.  For as a bystander, I lay no claims.  Anything I do will hasten the inevitable.  So I let the weaning drip down to nothing.  Reluctantly I watch as you disappear with my heart in hand.  I stood firm as you ran away in place.  You turned to me, you needed me, you loved me.  As the clouds dissipate and the sun creeps over the horizon, With the blue sky I turn to mist. Slowly fading to the past.  A ghost of could've been, used to be, and never was

**Surrender takes time
                        Reluctantly relinquished
                                               I will fight no more