Tales of suffering

What I did to you

                      I didn't want to wipe away your smile. It shone like a beacon, a lighthouse guiding the lost back to shore. Even with half of that light I would still be a hole of darkness. An empty shell of a human that sucks in the light of everything it touches, everything that has the misfortune of stepping into its path. Sucked cold and dry, even if it just gets close. But it didn't matter what I wanted; it has been done now. Your face remains a dark hedge of thorns, black and sharp where a soft smile had one been. Round, and pure and innocent and mine, all gone, just like that. And I kept pretending it hadn't really gone, that I could reach into the thorns are get it back, that it had just hidden away, no, been covered by this new layer I could trim away. None of that was true. The layer of thorns is far too thick to imagine now, it seemed to me, far too thick to trim, to even cut down. But that wasn't true either. That layer is all there is now. It runs far and deep to your very core and it has wound round and round so that it is impossible to find the beginning or the end of it. It has grown sharper and blacker than I ever could have thought. I wiped and smudged and tore that smile away until it disappeared for good, until it was no more, until it felt as if it had never shone at all. I've done it now.

                 I couldn't deal with myself. I think to be sad and for no other purpose. I lie to myself in my attempt to be true and genuine. I lied to you. I want to say I wish it didn't come to this, but what if I'm lying again? I am, I must just be pretending to care about the light I put out, the lighthouse I destroyed, the smile I lost. There, I did it again. I only care if it affects me, I only see things through a selfish lens. This very train of thought is a sign that I only care for myself. Perhaps even this self-awareness is yet another sign, a further, deeper sign that I only care for myself, that i only consider other people in relation to myself, that I'm only concerned by this fact if it means I am a bad person. Its true, of course I am. If I am not then who is? Perhaps no one. Perhaps everyone. I am, I know I am. I wish I could tell you about this all. And that you could tell me that none of it is true, that I'm not a bad person. But the thorns have grown far too thick. I sowed them myself, I did it all myself and all I think about is myself. All I think about is myself. they've grown so sharp. They grown so black and dark. Regret is a funny word. I miss the you I use to own. I know.