I Just Don’t Understand

- Rift: Part I - Poem X -

Same old cycle, your lessons come too late,

History repeats, I’m just another left in your wake

Except for me, I tried to help you in times of need,

I’d still go to the ends of the Earth, your fiery steed

You gaze in the glass and accuse your fate,

Say you’ll fall back into ways that are your traits

It was you who tore us apart with indifferent hands,

I wonder if you were truly ever a man

I try to outrun it, the blame and ache you left me,

You broke me into a million pieces and didn’t break me free

It’s chaos you wanted, and I was calm,

You’ll never find stability within that norm

So what if I bask in exquisite decay?

When nobody sees what I choose to portray?

I just don’t understand why the hell you left,

I can’t understand why you said we’re not containable 

I’ll never understand how you can sit there,

And pretend we weren’t something to fight for

I wake every day in dried tears and sweaty sheets,

Another night of terror, another way of healing to gatekeep

Everyone said I deserve better, but they can’t see,

The potential you awakened within me

Curtains draw each day like a funeral veil,

Swallowed by stories too painful to tell

On days of the 19th and 23rd, I can’t get out of bed,

‘Cause it all comes back to me, how everything I gained is now dead

You can’t absolve me with vacant eyes,

While I rehearse your thousands of texted lines

The more I try to untether this tether,

The more I mistake pain for pleasure

But that’s why you chose to end things over text,

And discard me like a high school ex

Stopped promoting your songs just for silence to ring,

You know what you did; I wasn’t just a one-night fling 

Avoid it all you want, but one day it’ll come out,

The emotions, the mistakes, the worry, and the doubt 

I gave up time with my family to see you,

But you didn’t come to see me when I turned twenty-two

All the things you gave me are frozen in time,

The clothes, the photos, the basket you gave me that night

I take comfort in the things I gave you,

Do they speak too?

The albums you introduced me to,

I now cry too, about you

Supported you every chance I got,

While I had to beg for breadcrumbs in parking lots

Told you I felt like an exile and then regretted it,

But by then, you had already snuffed the fire we lit

You’d never leave, then never mind,

Marriage and move-ins turned into separation and other finds 

I just don’t understand, after a year together, why wasn’t it worth more?

Everything you promised me, I kept score 

I just can’t understand every decision you made when ending things with me,

Do you feel better now that you’re free?

I’ll never understand why you did what you did,

And I don’t think I ever will