Steeped in pain,
I watched you borrow the only feelings
You'd ever known
From a sadistic boy
And regretfully I sat idly by
As you called those same feelings your home

When were you lost on me?

As you hid under that makeshift house,
I forgot to listen,
forgot to care,
forgot to love
Then like the pious me, I doused
your feelings with apathy
and hung on every apostrophe,
as if it were some disgusting catastrophe.

As if it mattered.

And my eyes were clouded with a mist
That penetrated your naked skin and cut to your depleted heart
Where was I when your bones were were breaking apart?

How did I miss it?

I knew so much about real, unconditional love
Yet I was so lost in the sea of my own transgression I didn't want to admit existed
That when you reached out, I resisted

Even worse, that you never even felt like you could reach out.

At what shameful point did  my ever-present annoyance consume the love I once knew?
At what point did I decide it was fine to act that way?
To pretend, despite my every inclination,
That something as consequential as justification
Is simply a side effect of my every sensation?

At what point did I abandon Truth?

Please forgive every moment that I wasn't praying,
Every moment that I spent toying
With the notion
That you were past redemption....
No longer a saint, time to accept exemption.

Even I know that's not true.

But now I'm here.
And I just want to be a friend.

*Because sometimes, that's all we're called to do.