codependency, pt. ii

When I sleep I dream you're gone from me,

But I find you in a theater showing a movie we've already seen.

I run out half-way through; you run after me

swallowing the bitter backwash of our animosities

but I've already made it to the place where streets are empty

no lamps not flickering—still I wear your hoodie

paused at the intersection between freedom and security.

Wake up, remember all the things you changed for me

and all the times our love broke your ego into pieces.

Yet here I go again, chiseling at your inadequacies

and I'm wondering how patterns can repeat so differently.

Meanwhile you're really gone like we agreed

because I said it's what I need: to parse through memories

of when your trauma planted seeds that keep sprouting new weeds.

My violenced values need direct humanitarian relief

since I genocided them with each urge to keep the peace.

Fuck, neither of us would’ve wanted me to be this meek—

questioning my words every time I go to speak?

So stay gone while I erect my spine, please,

while I scrape away at each gray matter crease

to extract every barnacled anticipatory motif,

do a deep-dive exploration of my shipwrecked boundaries...

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This ocean's keeping secrets that long precede

the times you trained me to trap my tongue between my teeth,

down here I see I’m almost always willing to concede

my will to anyone with a strong desire to defeat it,

that as young as three I learned to neglect my own needs,

and here at thirty-three, it finally dawns on me

a boundary isn’t something I need you to receive

but a commitment to show up for myself if I’m mistreated

and that includes all the ways I mistreat me.

It seems I've abandoned myself far worse than I dared think...

Maybe it's been me all along?

Maybe self-neglect is all I've ever known?

Maybe this isn't a meekness you've sown,

but I was always a lamb, those times I thought me a lion?

Maybe I've never built a hill firm enough to stand on?

Maybe I’ve never expressed what I wanted to show

because I never actually developed a voice of my own?

Maybe self-promises were just buttons poorly sewn

(popping off with careless flicks of my thumb)

because I never asked myself: “what do I really want?”

then loved myself enough to actionably follow up…

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Here I am now, surfacing.

It'd be a lie if I denied this furious urge for liberty

(there's a kraken down there who wants to be released)

but I'd rather learn to love without losing my beliefs

because I found a treasure chest with a message well-received:

that you're just holding up a mirror while I beg me to change me.

It's true that even here, years beyond your worst treacheries

I could stake my future to our past, say with you I can’t be free

ignore your time-tested healing of learned toxic masculinity

invalidate the times you actually took accountability

make the old scars bleed again, say they run too deep

bomb the shelter you built since then, run adrenaline junkie.

But I’d rather do the hard thing

where you come back, and we can see

me teach myself this lesson that seems so feasibly in reach:

How to love you well while also choosing me.