“Do you love me?”
her words pained me to answer,
as they slipped from her lips,
unspeakably sudden,
like the cliché shot to the heart;
A shot I knew I’d soon return.
Every answer— excuse that came to me,
Outlined the ‘typical man’ she described;
Every thought fit her very hatred I knew.
My pause held her in anxiety for a moment.
The silence reeling,
its webbed cage of anguish around her heart.
It tightened, revealing old scars,
Drawing blood from keloided heartbreaks,
Salty tears trying to melt away the ‘typical’,
That had so secretively crept in her life again.
With all the hope in her soul she denied the truth.
She fought the quiet with her—
Weakening faith for the future.
Not so hopefully anymore,
Not so strong as she was, she
Is over taken.
She swallowed the silence, and
lifted herself from her seat, with
hope’s last glimmer turning to ash in her eyes.
And I wished that I could hide now,
from her hatred and disappointment.
I wished that I could give her my hope,
That still glowed.
My selfishness will say my misery, was
Stronger, in fact, than her own.
But as the door shut behind her,
her black heels still shadowed beneath her exit,
her body shivering I could tell,
my regret had already began to fade.
**Tell me what you think about the title too please and thank you!
