He was all hypnotism.
Too beautiful to be contained.
We were so full
of intolerable promise.
The body, used.
The smell of unleashed emotions.
I stopped to remember him
like that.

It was courageous of him
to admit that his heart
was a den of lonely
selfish ambition.
He had told me the truth.
But it was too, too much.
Sometimes,
you're too ashamed to leave.
And stupidly,
and humbly,
you stay.
Maybe I thought it was a test?
Maybe, I needed too much
to know the facts.
If you love something
(really love it)
then it loves you back,
in whatever way it has to love.
That should have been true.
It should be true.
But it is the most false thing.
The biggest lie of all.

So I sized up my world
with erratic reservations.
I violently pitted myself
against the human heart.
I slammed the door impulsively
on my past.
I broke the pattern of my life,
and I left.

Sometimes,
I feel myself
thoughtlessly slipping
back into affection for him
again.
But I am stopped,
by that feeling deeping than thought,
which contains the truth.