What I Was Afraid to Say (Poem)

I gave myself to you,

Fully and completely it seems,

Or else I wanted to.

I wanted to be lost,

I wanted to dive completely into a shallow pool,

Do what I wasn’t supposed to,

What didn’t make sense.

Afraid to write what I feel,

Afraid to say, “I love you,”

Because did I really?

Could I really?

Does it matter

If it felt real to me?

Is a simulated emotion less than a real one?

What I tried to say in verse, or couldn’t,

Was that I loved you, as best I understood how,

As best as my heart knew how,

As much or as little as I wanted to,

And I wanted to.

I wanted to believe

Believe you were the person I wanted you to be:

A reader

A beauty

An introspective soulmate.

You were all of those things and more

Or less; I don’t remember which.

I tried to tell my poem

All the disappointment I held

That you were not meant for me.

That poems would not be written about us

That lines would not form any symmetry between us

But maybe they did in another world.

I felt a love, a passion, that did not exist for you,

But seemed to for me.

I don’t care who realized it wouldn’t work between us

Say it’s you because it’s probably true.

I do remember you

And that time I loved you

It seems yesterday

But it might be now

At least a facsimile of an emotion, but no less real

For feeling that way

That way I remember now

That love I created yesterday

Lingers as the memory of today and the longing of tomorrow.