The Delusion of Your Hands

i am trying so hard to hate you

i’m failing

i should be able to do this

i can’t

it would all be so much easier

if your indifference could just flow over me

and straight down the drain

without sticking or stinging

one moment i feel like a glowing cathedral

the next my chest the echo of hollow stone

eyes touching me like devotion

hands reaching for me

like ice water in a desert

but your mouth is a blade

sharpened on silence

pushing me back into a dark wilderness

of confusion

with every word you don’t say

i somehow drink from you

and stay thirsty

sleeping beside a ghost

waking every morning

to emptiness

the same cruel question on my tongue

did i conjure you out of loneliness

am i delirious

is this what passes for love in your bruised heart

because you hold me like i’m holy

yet abandon me like i am nothing

and still I keep the door unlocked

as if absence were a prayer

and your shadow a promise

to one day embrace me

the way i desperately need you to

sadly

i can see the future

and brutally

painfully

truthfully

you won’t