Retrospect Poem by Tara Teeling

Was it love?

You’re wondering it,
as have I, and yes, I’ve
drawn my own conclusions.

I laughed at you,
with some obvious condescension,
and never once did I feel like I had to
hide it, or keep it somewhere where
you never saw it.
I was happy that I could laugh at all,
so comfortable in the skin that you craved,
that I became a believer in
the legend of me.
A strange weight to carry.

I knew that you’d dismiss them,
my unthinking abrasions,
with your own version of superiority.
There was safety in the sweet scorn
that smudged the mirrors and
distorted our reflections.
So common was it that
it felt nearly congenial and
every time you held me close,
I was put back in my place.

And you’d laugh at me
because you found me funny,
or because you thought it was
the only way to win.

There may have been lessons in it,
somewhere in the broken glass and ripped egos
but I stepped over them every time.
Even when I said that I’d had enough,
I never felt the massiveness of the words.
Those acrid mumblings meant nothing,
and were forgotten before they hit the dirt.

On those frosted, February mornings,
with the heavy, pewter skies,
you were always curled in beside me,
with some sort of contentment
in your sleeping eyes,
hinting nothing of goodbyes or endings,
and this felt irrevocable,
like a promise
sealed with blood.
It never occurred to me that
the weather would ever change.
I had come to put my faith in
unconditional endurance.

When I’d close my eyes,
and shut you out,
you’d slowly trace my face
with your rough, awkward fingers
and whisper to me, never knowing
that I was keeping every word,
somewhere deep.

I was more amazed than you
on that cold night when it all came undone.
You couldn’t give me what I wanted,
without my having to ask
and my pride didn’t let me see that
I’d stopped giving to you,
long before you denied anything of me.

My skin no longer possesses
the witchery and allure
which once held your devotion,
and my carefully crafted, savage humour
does no longer command
your good-natured praises.
There are only the whispered words
of an artless, ardent boy
rooted somewhere inside,
shaming me and owning me.
Warming me.

I don’t laugh at you anymore
and there’s no legend here;
just a pale, fractured myth which cracked
the moment the door closed.

Was it love?

I say yes,
because it’s the only thing
I’ve ever known
to hurt like this.