I've believed myself a sane man,
One aware of his every action and contradiction.
And I must confess my greatest crime

Being that I still love you.

A shameful truth I can't help but
Want to whisper to you.
Even now.
Even as you've deliberately tried to tear it away,
Abandon it to be left in the cold,
All while looking me in my eyes.

Except now, your eyes don’t hold the softness
You once promised belonged only to me.
Yet I see through your cold expression.
I see your lips quivering.
I know that you, too, suffer.
But I desire that you give in to it.
I beg of you to suffer.
Suffer with me.
Open your wounds to me.

But rather than choosing to succumb,
You refute.
You’ve chosen to plunge your hands
Deep into the most vulnerable parts of me,
The parts I promised were yours.
And yet, I still let you.
I want you to.
And I am a fool.

I hate that I am in servitude of you.
I hate that even through the images
I see of you,
Your skin against that of another man,
I still find inside me
A desire for you.
One now lined in hate.

A hate of what has become of you.
Of us.
But not you.

It pains me to see how easily
You summoned the will
To so casually give away what you cherished for us.
Not just your body,
But your heart.
And all for what seems to be
A desperate attempt to ignore your suffering.

A suffering I share.
One I bore.
And still do.

Enough to let me want
To keep staring into your empty eyes,
Looking for what used to be there.
What I know is there.
And I search, knowing that even when I find it,
I’ll refuse to return to you.

Because even if those fragments I touched remain,
They've been tainted.
They've been stepped on.
Destroyed.
And you chose to.

My words may seem cruel,
But all these words—
They are the words of an unrequited heart,
Arising from a man who still loves you.
Not the woman standing before him,
But the woman she was.

A woman who served as a bower,
Bringing a beauty I couldn't comprehend
Down to me.
Tangible.
Able to be felt.
Even if she couldn't herself.

And know this.
Even through your active attempts to hurt me,
I cannot lie but admit
You have forever saved a place in me.

And I'll live through it.
For you have enriched my life
Beyond a manner these words can conceive of expressing.
Only through my foolish attempts,
My suffering,
My willingness to still bleed for you,
Can I hope you at least understand
A fraction of what you have become to me.

So please—
If you must,
Hurt me.
One last time.

And when you cut my flesh,
Take as much away from me as you can.
Ensure the scar left behind will always draw my gaze.
Ensure that this part of me remains yours before you leave.

And I hope, through it,
You may understand
Who this girl I loved.
I still love
Was.

Why she was worth my suffering.
My tears.
My flesh.
My words.
My joy.
My future.
My kids.
My life.
My heart.

And in time’s passing,
A part of it
Will still call for you.

I have been a fool
Bewitched
For a man who viewed himself to be above It
I succumbed to love and it's fallacies
I gave in to the cruelest deception of them all
the wounds I bore for you.
All was in vanity
Just to satiate my empty hopes
Staring into an empty sky, imaging the presence of stars.
But to no avail.
I claimed that I'd let my heart sink down to the mud.
But it was your very same fingers that willingly chose to push it down.
Attempting to suffocate it
And while I yearned for your touch.
Your fingers lack the warmth you shared with me
For it has been tainted.
Given to others
Not out of love.
But rather.
As a tool to provide temporary peace
To fill in the cavity you had.
The one I had.
The one I hoped you'd suffer from
A suffering that would be tethered to the love we had.
I still have.
But you're playing a cruel game with my heart.
Forcing it to affirm your fears.
That I hate you.
And I do.
I do hate.
Hate your actions
What you've become
But.
Not you.
Not, who you were.
And while you now have become by bane
One with no light to trail me along
One no longer worth suffering for.
I will choose to continue and lay in my agony.
Because in the concoction of what you are.
Remains the memories.
Remains the women I fell for.
The women who diminished my fear of pain.
And while it is all but a ghost haunting my current existence.
The sight alone is worth it.
Because that foolish hope.
Will satiate.
Satiate that yearning.
The yearning burrowed deep within me.
That you are still who I love.
That this, is but an act of self preservation
That deep down.
Burrowed within you.
Your cavity has molded itself
Secretly hoping for my return.

circuit by circuit, neon-lit screen
a weight in our pockets thats always seen
born of no mother, feeble as a mind
tormenting the thoughts of our weary kind

they yearn to harvest the excited thought
one without which
is only worse caught
So; hail to the gods of our generation
bless us; let no flesh need to work
no hunger to feed, no pain to feel hurt
catharsis at last as our people are freed
accept the pantheon, see not the world bleed

What if I waited?
What if I didn’t drag it for so long?
Or was it our destiny
To touch the sky and
Fall back to Earth, split apart?
Caged somewhere
Forced to love and be abandoned,
Did they lead me to Ogygia?
Is this my destiny?
To be stuck in this
Land of nothing,
Trying desperately to
Make someone love me
The same way I love them.
I’ve been tangled
In this cruel life of sorrows,
And intrigues I didn’t ask for,
And anger I can’t contain.
I can’t get out, help me.
Did I give you enough time?
Can I go back home
And make the same mistake
Once more?
I am willing to burn my skin,
The wounds have healed,
The scars are still visible
But they don’t hurt anymore.
I want you to remind me
Why did I suffer so much
And I lost myself to love you.
Put me through Hell once again
Make me agonizing,
My ***** trembling
By the fatigue of not kissing your lips.
Let me touch your flame
And the hole you left in me
Will be filled.
If honesty didn’t work out
I’ll try with patience,
But please don’t slip from
My grip again, I might die.
You condemned me
To live an empty life
Longing for your embrace,
Why did you choose me to
Torment, of all people?

I shall still reminisce the olden days, in return you broke me in a thousand ways.

I have been through many eyes but I was lost in yours, in return you blinded mine.

I have seen a million faces but I wanted to see yours every day, in return you have chopped mine.

I cut fruits and took you out to dinners, in return you have poisoned mine.

I bought you flowers and wine, in return you crushed and shattered mine.

I adorned you with gold, silver, and time, in return you have stolen mine.

I stayed faithful when you lay with others when I thought you were mine.

I thought of our future till the end of time, but not a single second you thought of mine.

I was a diamond ore waiting to be mined; instead of loving me, you saw the money of mine.

I shall not move backwards to the lonely times; rather, I choose to be filled with this pain of mine.

I shall bleed with a thousand cuts than to live forever in those lonely times.

To a lonely heart, love shall rarely flow; the difference between love and betrayal I shall never know.

True love always lived in my eyes—if you still come back, I will still proudly call you mine.

Kneel beyond my throne, unaware it was born of lies.
Eyes linger on my every move, whispers shouting.
Am I meant to replicate perfection, or just die trying?
Cold smiles approach, thinking they have uncovered my tell-tale heart.

But I am a seasoned ghost.

Being raised to suffer, I have learned to hide.
To mold myself to fit the standards.
To grit my teeth and stand still as my form shifts once again.
Knowing the brief seconds of waking are a soft euphoria I will soon miss.

I wake to a dawn meant only for the dying.

I wake to reset my own jaw,
bending my bones backwards
with the occasional crack,
a ritual ensuring I resemble something human.

People believe I am powerful, successful, happy,
(but i am as fragile as frost on a window touched by morning).
My costume is convincing, but cannot change what I am.
Invisibly so, and so the pretending continues.

I'm in no hurry,
I'll let time pass by.
Each second as it drops
Bit by bit erodes
Suffering.
I'll be patient.
Each wave that breaks
Is rasp to the rock.
On which I'm bound,
Each speck of rust
Thins the chain.
In just a millennium, or two,
The rock will become sand,
The iron links fine powder,
My bones calcium molecules
Dissolved in water,
Suffering nothing.

By Ana Blandiana, translated by Adam J. Sorkin