As Quiet As I Could

I'm sad about how things have devolved. We're friends now; friends in that stilted, numb, conventional way that is pleasant and even gratifying amongst colleagues or friends of friends, etc.. But between us it just feels hollow, pretend. We both know there was something more to be had, and as it fades, the sadness is palpable. We talk, we're friendly, we're neither of us prepared to fully let go. But you'll never take responsibility for your emotional neglect, and until you have, I'll never trust you. And of course I realize you can't; to open up to that means opening up to the entire prison of your life, which is terrifying and, from your perspective, inescapable. And perhaps it is, after a fashion; perhaps it always was. For me, it would have been enough to have had a happy life together, but I haven't a career and...  entrenched... family ties, if not exactly close ones. The pain of parting from your painful like might simply have been too much,

After having written you that e-mail, I know in my belly that it's important I remain strong, which in this case also remains silent. I placed the onus on you to make the next move, and to retreat from that decision undermines my credibility, costs me your respect and my own self-respect. But it goes against my nature; one, separation anxiety. I don't actually want  you to go away; on the contrary, I'm hoping against stupid, foolish hope—that disagrees with my deep down intuition entirely, I might add—that you might ride to the occasion. I fear your failure to reply as another sign that I am yet again discardable. I thought... I thought I had been the good guy, for once, someone to be proud of, someone l liked. But your silence, your unwillingness to notice or in a tangible way show your care that I'm hurt creates a terrible dread that nothing and no one I will ever be will be loveable. I know, I know, the otherside to this story. This has nothing to do with me but

Listening to the playlist I wrote for you, the one you never understood, I think, even if you intended to take it seriously.  My how things have changed in only two weeks. My understanding of you, the scale and drama of the barriers between us, how I understand myself in the midst of all of it. Several days ago—the last night we had dinner to together at East Lagoon—it began to dawn on me, finally, that this isn't and was never going to work. I'm trying desperately not to be angry with you about it; I haven't any right to. But I've always found it challenging not to grow frustrated when a problem lies between me and someone else, a someone, a want, that ostensibly I know how to solve. Only, after all these years, I've learned at last that you cannot make someone see it your way. They have to get there on their own, and if they can't do it in time to resolve it (or, I suppose, if I've been wrong and can't see through it or let it go in time to re

Today, I fear, I must begin the process of grieving the loss of what, I'm accepting only through grit teeth and resisted denial, never was. What a small and forgiveable thing, not to call, not to say "good night".  A ridiculous thing to see meaning it at all. But in context, I can't currently understand how it doesn't say everything. Either you don't want me, or you don't want this, but no part of me accepts or believe that this wasn't a deliberate withdrawal. And that , sweet creature, at this stage, after what little we shared and given it's goodness, signs to me that I won't be allowed to love you, and you certainly aren't prepared to love me. You did warn me you'd push me away, I'll credit it you that. But in return I promised not to remain when or if I at last saw the warning signs of danger, and to have shifted in only four days from the desire to spend a romantic weekend together, from claims of love, to a refusal to so

So tonight I've not made the mistake of either consuming clonazepam nor immersing myself in a suite of soulful music that, in short order, I shall likely forever associate with you. And also, tonight, I've less a troubled heart than a pensive mind—though I confess to twinges of the former, nonetheless. But as it's these precisely that I mean to write my about, and perhaps my way through, I suppose it's apropos. I was so relieved to discover that you'd written me, last night, and twice no less.  I spared a moment of accusatory frustration with whichever cellular tower or device failures denied me those messages, and the subsequent phone call that might have followed. And I don't care at all to imagine you inspecting your phone with the same embarrassing, needy frequency with which I surveil my own, waiting for my reply, finding none, unable to spare yourself speculation on what it might mean. I did the same, despite every effort not to, despite writing here to

Muse aggress their beauty into my ears; the music I collected to create an emotion for—maybe of—you creates a space for words to enter from, to flow through. I confess I have done this once more, under similar circumstances; a someone I can't escape, or break, this attachment  to isn't in reach, but this mind won't let go, won't quiet. So into the internet I escape, with fingers and keys instead of voice and gesticulation, to express, unload, divest myself  of the volume. So much volume. I wish, I wish so badly, I was the man who was only worried; whose neurotic phone-checking and relentless considerations about contact owed only to some selfless benevolence. And make no mistake; I am  worried for you; not because you might not be "ok" in that callous, off-handed euphemism of that the word. In this sense of course you must be "ok"; breathing, safe from danger, fed and warm. But I wish such for everything that breathes and moves, whether escaped