He says that he does not trust me with his feelings. I gave him my trust and feelings to do with as he would after our second date. He did not seem to notice that he had them; they were forever dangling out of his pocket, dragging along the curb and collecting dust and debris. I do not think he ever noticed and he will never know how it feels to have to run alongside, hoping and reaching to retrieve them when he has already decided that it doesn’t even matter if they or I are there.
He tells me that I am passive-aggressive and that it hurts him. I cannot help but laugh because I have held so much back for the fear of that label and it finds me anyway. Oh, irony, such horrible, black irony. I am torn between calling it a double-folded strike, a manipulation, or a synchronicity. I truly cannot decide. What I do know is that there is no relation in his world that is not held in his own, iron grip; subject to no common ground, no collaboration, only and ever his perspective.
For this, alone, the truth of no benefit is realized. I cannot possibly be good to him because he cannot allow me to be who and as I am. He cannot possibly be good to me because I cannot give up who and as I am to soothe his fear.
In the end, he is right, even as the reason for all that rightness is entirely of our own making.
All I feel is sadness. We could have been so very beautiful to one another. It was all I wanted. I did not want everything, only the chance to be beautiful and good to him.
I am unable. As is he. The exultations, turned to ash, drift slowly to ground and become indistinguishable from it.
I will not try this again. I cannot. But the memory of the moment in which we both believed is beautiful still. It tugs and pulls at me and I realize that even this, I must release or it will drive me mad.
Life is so rich in its sorrow in this moment. I am pinioned by it and I writhe helplessly for it. Hurry, oh the next moment, and please… be merciful.