Short Shorts

You keep moving over
moving the lines of your principles, the lines of your dignity, to bask in this fictitious affection

. . . as if to mask its dependency—losing its identity

. . . the freedom to make one right choice within your reach today . . . to choose to exert power over your present life

. . . her vacant gaze looking back at a future which had never gone beyond 24 hours . . .

I caught his eye, and held it long enough to break open a floodgate of emotions.

—like monsters under your bed, which are never really there, but very real in your mind—

I thought I had become immune, hardened.
But I cried today,
for you.

I saw it in his eyes.
He was finished.
Had reached the end of his rope.

Do I dare ask,
“Why can I not accept you as you are?”