To whom it may concern...

To whom it may concern,

I am a work in progression.

And I think I’ve done it again.

Put myself first.

My therapist tells me this is progress.

That claiming responsibility for how others are feeling

Is a recipe for missing warning signs.

I say “I don’t think I missed the signs.

I was just afraid I already knew what they meant.”

That you can’t love a sinking ship to shore,

Not while you’re still pulling at the bulwarks.

And we built this boat.

With hands,

And hope,

And laughter.

We built this.

So it felt infelicitous to abandon it.

Not after all the storms it weathered.

Helmed by a belief

That history healed holey vessels

If you were willing to take on some water.

But I’ve been speaking in Tsunami lately.

Dialoging only in deluge,

In man over borderline insecurity.

And you can sink anything if you try hard enough.

Or if you never realize what drowning looks like.

And I kept missing the presage.

She was asking for air

I was searching for new depths.

We were bound to capsize.

To sink.

And I’m not sure what’s worse.

Destroying a beautiful thing

Or knowing you are always the anchor.

Weighing down anyone foolish enough to think our ship

Can float a relational deficit.

Can bottle a message

I wasn’t ready to read yet.

And I took up ship building

Because I was tired of being a heavy thing.

Because I wanted something to carry me.

But I can’t seem to construct anything

That lasts past the hull breach in my chest.

The mess of previous shipwrecks

I carry into every new vessel.

So our relationship

Became less sea worthy opportunity,

More buried brig.

More escape hatch.

More gangplank.

And it was me,

I walked off our ship.

But I tied a chain around our mast when I did it,

Terrified of going it alone.

They always say that the storm is coming

But I was the storm.

I arrived years ago all rage and damage

And she loved me anyway.

So I acquiesced.

Agreed to settle down,

But refused to remove the ruin

Rummaging around in my head.

Until it was too late.

Until I was already lost at sea.

Until I broke you too.

Have you ever loved someone so much you had to let them go?

She let me go.

Did it in such a way that I loved her even more afterwards.

But now the words “too much” keep playing in my head.

Because when she expressed what I meant to her,

Those words would always follow her answer.

Like she knew loving me

Was bound to be more than she bargained for.

To whom it may concern,

If you’re reading this bottled message,

I am a work in progression.

And I think I’ve done it again.

Put myself first.

This isn’t an S.O.S.

More a promise.

To myself.

To the mess of me.

That the next ship I build

Will be built to last.

I tell my therapist this.

He says “great,

But if you want this to stick,

You have to stop being codependent.

The metaphors are nice,

But you don’t think you’re a good thing

Unless someone tells you you are.

And you are.

A good thing.

But no ship will ever last the storm of you

Until you believe that too.”

I say “dammit,

I’m trying turn this tragedy into something beautiful.”

He says “Exactly.

“Stop needing relationships to show you what you do has meaning.

I’ll say it again,

You are a good thing.

Even after everything you did.

Now let’s end this session of a poem,

So you can start writing a new one.”