MODES ★★★

I try so hard to hate you
I tell anyone who will listen
I don't want you back
I would never want you back
While still quietly defending
Your flaws and faults

I say
You were awful

I say
You hurt me
more than anyone in your position
should

Such an arbitrary thing

Your things still litter my home
my thoughts
From where you left them
thinking you were coming back

I say
I will keep them

I say
It serves him right

And I think of ways to return them
without making you upset

having to face your anger

your tongue is quick and cutting
a well polished stiletto
and I've certainly come to fear it

I try so hard to force you down
make you manageable
swallowable
The force of my urgency
splitting me at the seams
until I am of two minds

I wish you had seen my strength
and not only
what must have seemed
my endless weakness

Dashing myself on your stones

I say
I hate you

I say
You never gave me a chance

I say
It's not fair

But most things aren't
and I know this very well by now
But still I speak it like a mantra

To regain myself I railed against you
Forceful and needing and lost
To regain some semblance of humanity
I misplaced what it actually is

I say
biting back my uncertainties
I only took what I needed

I say
That I don't love you

To fight down the thought
that you are repelled by everything
I am or have become

I can't be sure

But in my dreams
You still talk in those storybook tones
A haunting echo
of when you used to tell me secrets
that you made up just for me

In my dreams you tell me
your regrets
as if you were in the future looking back
ambiguous ghosts

Your stunning realizations
Your tender
heartfelt
implications

And I wake up
Acutely aware of what it was
I actually lost

(I say
you are beautiful)

(I say
amid the caustic words
he's not really a bad person

I say
he used to be so good for me
he used to be

I say
We just did bad things.)