I listen to the silence you leave me in and learn things.

I learn that I have been passive and submissive for a very long time. That sometimes I hang back when others blaze in with passion and conviction, and dither on the outskirts, tentative and uncertain.

Or when someone else would have exited, slamming the door behind her with emphatic drama, I linger, hoping things will get better, not able to see they are as bad as they are.

I become furious about old trespasses...in retrospect, still wondering, years later, just when and where the lines were crossed.

I worry that I bring out the ****** in men. Because I seem inevitably to do that for so many of them. A reflective surface for weaker resolves.

Old hurts float to the surface these days, leaving something else behind.