Nemesis

In the middle of a fight

I say things I know will hurt you

"I don't love you anymore!"

A lie you'll never unhear

Despite the fact we're textbook toxicity

I've honestly never stopped loving you...

Wanting you, needing you...

Even getting hurt by you

It's reached a point it physically hurts

The bruises are now hands-free 

I hate where we are

I'm afraid to love you still

Why did we let ourselves

Become our worst nemesis

Despite this being my point of view I'll say I'm

Not pretending I'm a saint

I'm ashamed the State made a case out of it

And hate that I learned that lesson hurting you

I'm better but I can't take that away

Yet you stay, and I stay...

Knowing full well we should stop

Holding tight to fading memories

Together just holding hands

I hate where we are

I'm afraid to love you still

Why did we let ourselves

Become our worst nemesis

Even now you're miles away

The state line between us 

Is closer than the real distance between

Are we avoiding the fact

We are exactly where we need to be

I forget who we were

I'm afraid to love you still

Why did we let ourselves

Become our worst nemesis

So where do we need to be?

Healing, mourning, 

With plenty of space between us

Are you my drug of choice?

Is that why I'm denying reality?   

STRIKE FIRST

I had suspicions... I'm a lovefool, but I'm weathered too
Every time I voiced my fears, I was gaslit effortlessly
Before I know it,
I'm foolishly devoted to a con... a player
Even through my adoring eyes I see y our words are... dubious

So how do I find myself caught unaware
With the conflicting lines, I got the truth half the time
You were here getting even for things
that were only your sins of thought

I've heard of a preemptive strike
But what you DO... IT'S something new
I'm left bewildered and confused
End the war before I'm belligerent
Strike First!  Obliterate, raze my heart with everyone

If I wasn't so... brutalized by it I'd be in... awe
The level of planning and imagining conspiracies
If I hadn't gone through it, I'd say
"Impossible!"
How can you let someone love...
you... then ruin them for all time

Of course I play the part you had set for me Armed with just suspicions, I acted out with vengeance
You'd confirm, deny...
Either way you made sure they WOULD take root in me 

I've heard of a preemptive strike
But what you DO, IT'S something new
I'm left bewildered and confused
End the war before I'm belligerent
Strike First! Obliterate, raze my heart with everyone

Even my closest, longest, confidants
Only saw the victim you made yourself
Now I'm here on my own
Brokenhearted... NO... emotionally eviscerated
No trust left or friends
Just unimaginable pain
when you enter my brain

I've heard of a preemptive strike
But what you DID... WHO RUINED YOU?
I'm left... ... numb ... ... dumb
End ... war? ... ... I'm belligerent
Strike First!  Strike ... First??? Pain.   A memory when I could feel.

decorate the cage

It’s hard to make this feeling musical.

No melody alive could carry this hollow.

Even if I stripped these words bare

and spoke them plain into the air,

some drummer somewhere

would still drag a beat from the bones.

But this is not silence.

Not the lack of rhythm.

This is the pain of once holding something warm

and watching it be withheld

for nothing.

No locked gate.

No warning sign.

No barricade of iron or law.

Just a road that starts in sunlight

with everything you prayed for in your hands,

then bends, slowly, smiling,

away from where you need to go.

You cannot turn around.

Time is a hallway with one door.

It closes behind you

each time you breathe.

And say you rebuilt it.

Brick by faithful brick.

Say you found the same hands,

the same room,

the same first light.

Would it live again

with all these wounds still open?

Or would it curdle on arrival,

go bitter on the tongue,

another beautiful thing

spoiled by being touched too late?

So why do we keep walking?

Why feed the machine that hollows us out?

Why return to altars

that never answer?

Maybe we mistake endurance for purpose.

Maybe we call repetition hope.

Maybe we love ourselves so little

we decorate the cage

and name it home.

Entangling.

I hated being so quick to lose my cool 

I regret not being able to breathe and let be

Its a tragedy love isn't really enough 

And I regret giving so much freely 

A shame things had to end this way

But I can't regret doing the right thing 

And walking away, I'll be okay. 

Building walls just to keep you away

I can't care if you're fine or not 

That compassion always snares the trap

Entangling me back with you 

Entangling a crazy rendezvous 

Entangling my heart be damned

Entangling where I was bound

I can't allow my self to reminisce now

I know I'll end up even worse off than I am now 

This parasisic relationship isn't fair 

You always come out of it better still

It's no wonder you fight so hard 

Only at the end to keep it going 

The emotional warfare takes pause

Now your crazy has another cause 

If I break away theres nothing

Stable enough for you to cling to

Entangling so we rely 

Entangling codependency lies 

Entangling all I have now

Entangling all your desires

I can't be who I am

If I stay with you you'll deplete me of what makes me 

And to leave you I have to let go of the last bits

Of empathy I have still to claim my name

If I stay I fade away

And that's why I keep finding I'm 

Entangling me back with you 

Entangling a crazy rendezvous 

Entangling my heart be damned

Entangling where I was bound

Entangling so we rely 

Entangling codependency lies 

Entangling all I have now

Entangling all your desires

Mirror Work

Every day finds its way back here

not loudly

not even deliberately

just… without resistance

the same words

worn thinner each time they’re spoken

until they barely resemble intention

“we’ll be better”

said like a habit

not a promise

and I hear it

while it’s happening

that’s the difference now

nothing is hidden anymore

not the pattern

not the pause before it repeats

not the moment where I could stop it

and don’t

there’s a quiet after

not relief

just the absence of movement

plans get mentioned there

softly

as if saying them gently will make them real

they settle like dust

untouched

exactly where they land

I’ve kept pieces of proof

that I meant something else

fragments of plans

versions of myself

that almost existed

they don’t feel like memories

they feel like evidence

of something that never fully happened

you say my feelings need reigning

that I stretch things too far

that what I hold onto

costs more than it gives

maybe that’s true

but the mirror doesn’t argue

it doesn’t soften anything either

it just shows me

that I see all of this

and stay anyway

there’s a point

I can feel it now

not ahead of me

but close

where this either breaks

or it ends

and I don’t know

if those are different things

it’s quiet here

too quiet to call it peace

more like everything

holding its breath

including me

Unnecessarily

Unnecessarily

I fought to keep us from ending,

certain the collapse

would shatter

what was left of me.

Instead—

silence.

A peace I haven’t known

since knowing you.

Was our love real,

or just a byproduct

of your mimicry

in the light?

Lately you can find me

curled in confusion,

reeling from what just happened

or what might.

I never thought I’d come so close to death.

I tasted it. Twice.

Like the base of your neck—

scentless.

Like the part in your eyes

that never sparked.

If there was love in you—

for me, for anyone—

it lived only as potential.

I sit awake, lights blazing.

I am afraid of myself.

Gaslit enough

to doubt even my own name.

If you told me I was Mitchell Rodney,

would I believe you?

I wanted warning signs.

I saw them.

I didn’t understand them.

A man at midlife

without relations of any kind—

should have been enough.

I’ve learned my life

was at least half a lie.

The pictures only partially true.

And I am not innocent.

I am, too—

an incomplete collection

of painful venom,

unnecessarily.

An Incomplete Collection

I've been fighting to keep this relationship coming to a hault

Fearing an impending chaos too much for my already fracturing psyche 

But all I'm finding at our end is unexpected calming silence

Peace I haven't known since knowing you

Was our love ever real

Or are my feelings just a byproduct 

Of you sociopathic mimicry

To function out in the light

There is one way lately you can always find me

Curled up in confusion,

Reeling either things just happened 

Or anticipating what is next

I never thought I'd ever come so close to death

I could taste it twice

It's like the scent at the base of your neck 

Absent of anything just like the part in your eyes that should sparkle

If there was ever love in your heart for me

Or anyone like you claim

It's really amazing your potential

The amazing things, beyond your wants and needs

Like love or whatever you could dream

But sadly, like my recent ramblings 

Just an incomplete collection of painful venom unnecessarily 

I sit up these nights too late

Every light on, all very bright

I'm scared for myself

I've been gaslight by each significant love in my life expottentially 

I can't trust any word to be true and genuine 

Even a truth like my name so unquestionable

Would I believe you or spiral in uncertainty if you told me my name was Mitchell Rodney

I always wished people came with warning signs

Turns out I just couldn't process what I was looking at

Any man surviving to the midlife point without any significant relations

That's everything I needed to know to stay away 

I obnoxiously promote that through my time with you,

I've learned the life I lived was a least half a lie

My pretty pictures I sold only partially accurate. 

At least I learned and accept I'm just like you 

An Incomplete Collection of Painful Venom Unnecessarily