Your pride and my pride clashed

The collision shattered the air as shards of ourselves flew outwards.

You tried wresting the levers of control from my grasp, and I viciously clawed at your tender, well-meaning hands.

I swallow my pride.

I gaze directly into your shining brown eyes

Trying to hold my countenance steady

A desperate sailor furiously fighting against the howling wind to keep her vessel true.

And then shame rears up inside my ribs

Opens taloned wings

Scrapes my insides as it surges up, up, up until it chokes out my words

Sadness cradles my head in a weighty embrace

Pulls my face downwards and compresses me inwards.

I am a derelict car meant to be compressed into derelict scrap metal meant to be melted down—a rush of molten matter pulling down time and space around me!—and then repurposed, reused, for some grander cause.

And they say I shouldn’t blame myself—but of course, you said I should.

You say that onus of guilt lies squarely on my shoulders. I wonder if you—upon seeing my staggering, gasping steps—would feel pity.

Or revulsion, contempt, apathy.

“Oh fine! You were right!” I scream out raggedly into the blackness.

“You were right! You were right! I should have stopped!”

“Are you happy?”

My throat is raw from the demons tramping through.

“Are you pleased? Thrilled you can say ‘I told you so’?”

WELL ARE YOU?

My gray-blue-green eyes stared resentfully at your gentle visage for so long

And I was convinced they saw through you.

I suppose we were just wrong in our own ways

That we are all just beautiful mistakes

Making ugly and lovely mistakes of our own