I Didn't Want This To Hurt

I didn't want this to hurt.
Not because I did not want to feel the pain of it, but for the reason that I did not want it to hurt.
This was the only one that didn't, and you knew that.
All of my friendships, no matter what, are laden with disappoint, comparisons, and sadness.
This was the only one.
I've never signed a lease without devising a way to break it first, 
I've never loved someone without imagining the end, the entire way through it.
I gave you a letter of sentiment, once, it said no matter what happens down the road, 
that I wanted you to know my exact feelings, right now.
You kept it in a jar, I never asked if you had opened it, 
you told me that you had.
One day the envelope was gone from the jar, because it was a jar I had given you, and you found what you wanted to use it for. 
I brought you presents because I wanted to, I hadn't felt that in what seemed like quite a while.
The walls, barriers, and blockages, created by us both, dissolved before our eyes, as we sat in your living room, mostly just watching them dissipate.
Once my heart was open, it began seeping, and I lost control of it as I do, this was something, the one thing, that I could not communicate to you.
I wanted this to be easy, because love is supposed to be easy.
But like parents to a child, what did we expect to forge out of our intertwined quandaries, neurosis, complexities, obstacles and doubts.
You made me better, though, we made each other better.
It isn't over
but I want it back
just the same.


"I breathed your name into the air
I etched your name into me
I felt my anger swelling
I swam into its sea
I held your name inside my heart
But it got buried in my fear
It tore the wiring of my brain
I did my best to keep it clear
So dear, no matter how we part
I hold you sweetly in my head
And if I do not miss a part of you, a part of me is dead
If I can't love you as a lover, I will love you as a friend
And I will lay a bed before you
Keep you safe until the end"