The Burden Poem by Maddi Eden

I see your PIN from over your shoulder one day
Later, I feel like a game
So I switch on your phone and type it in.

But you've changed it.
Why? Because I saw?
But why?

Increasingly suspicious, yet knowing
It's wrong
I spy until I see the new PIN

And then when I'm alone
With your switched off phone
I use it, and read, and read.

And feel like my insides are shrivelling:
the sexual references make me squirm
the realisation hits me like a swift lethal dart

Now I am compulsed, I cannot stop, oh!
I know I should, it will change nothing.
But I read them daily, I have the burden of knowledge.

I can't shake it. I can't lift it
One day I ask you, straight out, but
You lie.

What I'm doing is wrong.
What you're doing is not my business.
But it's still wrong

When you complain of such a busy day
I wonder wryly
Busy in what sense?

When you switch off your phone every evening
I know why, God help me, I know.
I only wish I didn't.