You're Still Not Listening

You’re still not listening.
I feel like I’ve been saying this for months,
shrieking like a train whistle,
scribbling with my pen on the paper until blood and ink cover the page.
But still nothing.

You ask me what I want,
and I tell you.
Space, time to think, time to process, time to figure out how to tell you the things I’m feeling.
And you say, okay. Like you understand.
But soon enough, you’re pressing for more.
Asking how you can fix things,
how we can be friends again,
the way we were before.
But I’m telling you,
We can’t.
There’s been too much broken, shattered, torn, shredded, lit aflame.

I’m telling you,
that I feel like I’m talking to my dad again.
Sending letters of verse and prose alike,
but having no effect.

You’re still not listening.
You say that you want to respect the boundaries I’ve put in place.
Then, in the next sentence,
you say that you don’t think they’re working,
that you want to do something different,
that your plan is better.
You’re afraid that the time I am taking for myself is turning me against you.
Well, if that is the result of me thinking about the situation, and thinking about you and me,
then you have to accept that.
Because it means that I’m learning to be myself, listen to myself.
I can look at all the contradictions and backsteps that you take via texts,
and I can see the manipulation. Even if you can’t.

I will not deny that we’ve had good times.
I’m not going to lie about that.
It would be easier if we hadn’t.
Then I could just walk away and not feel like my insides are being clawed out as I write this.
But now, after all this,
I can’t listen to you, or get a text from you, without questioning the purpose behind every word.
My rose-tinted glasses are shattered,
and I can’t go back to seeing only what you want me to, instead of what’s actually in front of me.