You need me,
I can see.
I feel for you,
I want you to know just how much,
But somehow
cannot move these leaden feet.
Don't fall apart in front of me.
I want to help,
I really do
Yet my position is already defined.
In your moments of rage and ecstasy
You were teaching me
how to treat you.
I have trodden on these oaths dutifully.
Oh! But it is so confined.
You have found yourself
In a mess
That you have created
Time and again.
You battle yourself
And I have to stand by and see.
I cannot fight your fights,
To expect so, would demand unfair of me.
You would not mind it,
Even an ounce
But I will not sacrifice
The life I have carved out for me.
For you to be so shallow,
I could not have dreamed.
But if that is the way you have chosen,
Then let it be.
I tread around you carefully,
I am scared of your grief engulfing me.
To relieve it, I will have to lose myself,
Change directions, my entire trajectory.
Something binds me still,
Grounding me to stay put
And watch your misery.
There is an emptyness in my mind
When I think of you,
An emotional gap
That I dare not fill.
How did it turn out to be?
I do not know, I do not know.
But that it was my doing entirely
Would be a hasty decree.
You have made your life a tragedy,
But I have mine laid out before me.
In the struggle against your lines,
I cannot afford to lose my peace of mind.
I have so dearly bought it.
Lulling it in its cradle
Until I can again feel
Dreams inside me blossoming.
I cannot, will not uproot
The sprouting leaves
For you to feel free.
Let me be!
I have sufferings enough
For you to burden me
With longing gazes and unsatisfied faces
Dogging me down in the chase
In the filthy streets.
I don't expect anything from you.
I cannot carry the load of your guilt
And piling regrets
Which will flutter away
The moment you can gamble again.
Then you will not remember me.
But I do not complain
I only want for you to be happy
And for me to be free.
I have taken away your power to hurt me.
You have always had it and now it is gone.
You desire companionship
But indulging in your misery,
is not my cup of tea.
I have drank from that cup before
It leaves a bitter taste
Polluting my shores.
I long to see a change of scenery,
For Iife to play a different reel,
Instead of the one it plays on repeat.
But it is a choice you have made for me,
Molding my circumstances to
The current seal
stamped on the package marked for me.
But if that is the way it has to be,
Then I have chosen not to see.
To not consider the pleas
the desperation hidden beneath.
I have freed my mind
Directed my emancipation.
Escaped from the gallows
To gaze underneath the heavenly sky.
Why absorb your insanity
When I can open my mind
To a higher perspective
And reason with a better intellect.
I do love you,
I am sorry, but this is the way
It has to be.
Do not expect more
Or it will destroy me.