You Don’t Love Me

You don’t love me.

You love the polished version,

The one that smiles at the right time,

Laughs at your jokes,

And never spills over the edges.

You love the surface,

Not the cracks that run deep,

Not the darkness I tried to hide

But couldn’t keep from seeping through.

You loved the idea of me,

The clean, safe picture you painted,

Not the real me

The messy, raw, clawing-at-the-walls me.

You wanted a lover who’d never scream,

Who’d never shatter under the weight of his own mind,

Who’d never fucking need too much.

But I do.

I do.

Do you know how much it burns,

How much it hurts inside me,

Knowing you held the fantasy tighter than my hand?

Knowing you kissed my lips

But wished for someone softer, easier?

Do you know what it feels like

To love someone who looks at you like a goddamn project

Something to fix, to refine, to polish

Instead of something whole?

I gave you my broken pieces,

Hoping you’d hold them with care,

But you didn’t.

You looked at them like they were sharp,

Like they might cut you,

And I saw it

The flinch, the hesitation.

You didn’t want my shattered truths,

Only the parts that gleamed in the light.

And now, I am drowning in your indifference,

Furious and hollow,

Begging myself to stop aching for you.

Why do I grieve for someone

Who never loved me.

Only the shape of me,

The shadow of something easier to hold?

I want to scream,

To tear apart the image you built,

To make you see the real me

The angry, desperate, unlovable me.

But it won’t matter.

Because you don’t want the truth.

You never did.

And maybe that’s the cruelest part of all…

You made me believe I could be enough.

But I was never enough for you,

Not as I am.