why does it seem as if everyone has left me?
my hands quiver as i verbalize these thoughts
and the sweat from my palms dampens the page --
my vulnerability has become difficult to manage,
despite my mind's intent to remain good-willed
and my heart's discontent with the language misunderstood

friendship does not require ideological consistency,
and to believe otherwise is a detriment to the love
we are fortunate enough to experience in this life;
intellectual supremacy equates to the patronizing rhetoric
embedded within the elitism of the morally superior --
your grim clouds turn our progressivism dull

i will say what i need to retain a friend,
but the judgment within is a grudge untouched,
a ghastly bruise that never seems to mend --
you do not get to determine the language i speak,
the words i weep, or the healing i seek
when a bond so potent is forgotten so easily

to question my morality is to question my identity,
and those who know are the ones to see me grow
as i flourish from the bounds of these restrictions
and inch my way upright, stronger than before,
disallowing my words to be misconstrued,
a prohibition of the trauma i continue to elude

a Leo is loyal like the lioness of a pride,
gnawing at the flesh of the ones who betray --
grudges maintained in the chill of the winter,
a midnight breeze toppled an unchanged core --
it is not a star, this dim light retreating above,
merely the fading memory of our platonic love.