A memory
In my mind's eye, you become the epitome of everything I think I want - strong, willful, powerful, controlling, and hard. You can cow me without a word, lift my spirits with the touch of a finger, and break my heart without a glance. I revel in my place at your feet, constantly dying a thousand ecstatic times each second, caught in a paroxysm of endless painful joy that will not release me. I know that beneath your facade, you care, you delight in each moment I give you and treasure it as dearly as I.
And then you change, and I fall through your eyes, as I dare to glance, and we change places. And I learn that it is not the cruelly delicious taunting I thought it was, nor the oh-so-finely calculated disdain. It is nothing more than a lack of caring on your part. No concern for me, no secret hoarded thoughts of delight, nor of happiness. You use me in the basest of ways, forgetting my face the moment I turn away.
And now here I lay broken, shattered on the floor and certain I will never go on. Is this not what I wanted? The disdain, the lack of caring, the gratification of your sensual and physical desires while I am left wallowing in my own want, taught my place? But somehow it's not the same. Not when I learn you don't really care. And so I stand, and walk away from you, and go on as if nothing else has changed.
But I am changed. I am set on that path that leaves me wondering if I deserve anything, if I know my mind at all, if I truly desire what I think I do. Or if I am just sick and twisted at the end of this road, no more than a toy to be cast aside by gods and men alike, because I have nothing of myself to offer. And you haunt me - that knowledge I gained while I was in your mind, for that brief moment, stalks my every waking minute; my dreams are filled with memories of you that scare me more than I will ever dare admit; my heart is bruised and shattered by your touch, long gone.
I fantasize about you - about us. What we could have been if you had cared, if I had tried. Perhaps if I had been more assertive - but that isn't me, in the end. I spend my life rebuilding memories and thoughts, only now they are all tainted. No pure happiness, no joy untouched. The ink has fallen on the paper, and it is ruined now, and there is nothing left for us, not even in my mind.
And now, more than a year later, you find me, and you pursue me. And I give in, because once, just once, I want to pretend what we had was real, that there was something. And I cry when you touch me - no tears of joy, nor anger, nor even sorrow, unless you count the sorrow that I cannot feel a thing now when I am near you. That what I spent my life on is pointless. And I listen to your words, and I cringe at the hand that falls, and I cower under your eye. And that part of my soul that I had nursed back to life, dark and deformed though it is, dies at the feel of you.
You've left me nothing but a broken shell and I will never be whole.
I'm back. I'm not the same one I thought I once was. Maybe I never was, though. But I'm here.
And then you change, and I fall through your eyes, as I dare to glance, and we change places. And I learn that it is not the cruelly delicious taunting I thought it was, nor the oh-so-finely calculated disdain. It is nothing more than a lack of caring on your part. No concern for me, no secret hoarded thoughts of delight, nor of happiness. You use me in the basest of ways, forgetting my face the moment I turn away.
And now here I lay broken, shattered on the floor and certain I will never go on. Is this not what I wanted? The disdain, the lack of caring, the gratification of your sensual and physical desires while I am left wallowing in my own want, taught my place? But somehow it's not the same. Not when I learn you don't really care. And so I stand, and walk away from you, and go on as if nothing else has changed.
But I am changed. I am set on that path that leaves me wondering if I deserve anything, if I know my mind at all, if I truly desire what I think I do. Or if I am just sick and twisted at the end of this road, no more than a toy to be cast aside by gods and men alike, because I have nothing of myself to offer. And you haunt me - that knowledge I gained while I was in your mind, for that brief moment, stalks my every waking minute; my dreams are filled with memories of you that scare me more than I will ever dare admit; my heart is bruised and shattered by your touch, long gone.
I fantasize about you - about us. What we could have been if you had cared, if I had tried. Perhaps if I had been more assertive - but that isn't me, in the end. I spend my life rebuilding memories and thoughts, only now they are all tainted. No pure happiness, no joy untouched. The ink has fallen on the paper, and it is ruined now, and there is nothing left for us, not even in my mind.
And now, more than a year later, you find me, and you pursue me. And I give in, because once, just once, I want to pretend what we had was real, that there was something. And I cry when you touch me - no tears of joy, nor anger, nor even sorrow, unless you count the sorrow that I cannot feel a thing now when I am near you. That what I spent my life on is pointless. And I listen to your words, and I cringe at the hand that falls, and I cower under your eye. And that part of my soul that I had nursed back to life, dark and deformed though it is, dies at the feel of you.
You've left me nothing but a broken shell and I will never be whole.
I'm back. I'm not the same one I thought I once was. Maybe I never was, though. But I'm here.