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.

Sometimes.
I do not wish to speak to you with words.
But rather, to see you with feeling,
Admire you through them.

For to use only words would be to limit myself.
To deceive you.
arriving to you fractured, blighted.

within every emotion that lies within me,
Lies every word  and idea I could only hope to shape for you,
Yet fail to capture.

Still, I will use them,
knowing their futility.
So you may see these emotions.
Through every ounce and aspect of my being.
And they, in turn, may touch every part of you.

And i will choose to not break free of this struggle.
The conflict of my words and emotions will only serve as a reminder of the effect you have bestowed upon me.
To live for.
And what you left for me to suffer for.