You remember how much I love poetry. That’s a statement, not a question, because if hearing about my interests was so agonizing to you I’m sure it’s burned in your brain. When you asked to hear what I wrote, were you trying to hurt yourself? Was that your attempt to drum up enough courage through resentment to cut me out?

Using someone’s passions against them, to gain an excuse to leave them is pretty screwed. All my mind is filled with is what you truly thought of me. And how that shattered when you saw that image wasn’t true, but the chance for repair was already gone. I hope you are suspended in the space between those moments.

Beneath the simmer of how you viewed me, is rage at how you let that affect how you treated me. It’s heartwrenching you were reactive to a person who didn’t exist. Your guilt over this manifested as your conceptualization of me. I was never involved in your choice to screw me over, that false image was. But here I am taking the brunt of it.

You not only let that perception of me affect your actions, but you built up a resolution in your head. That’s where your grief comes in. By not being a doormat, who’s perfectly fine with remaining friends after you ruined me, I gave you that brief window to see that I’m not the person you built up only to destroy. My grief is that if you wrecked this understanding of me, hurting me as a byproduct? You probably did the same in love. And I am not going to accept byproducts when I deserve someone’s full effort.

I’m writing this as a letter instead of a poem, because I truly did love you. And since hearing my poetry was so agonizing to you, I want to show a little tenderness through genuine understanding to someone I pity for their inability to reciprocate.