My Love For You Killed in Your Temper

When your temper left you

In long sentences and dark tones

Aimed at me like a shotgun 

Of forgotten kisses and sleepless nights

As we loved one another 

In sharp intakes and happy smiles

I wonder if it is fair that I loved you

Until you showed your hate?

I said to you that this moment

Was likely to reshape my opinion of you 

Which formed in the quiet moments you had once

Smiled at me with a soft gaze

Had you asked me just the day before 

Or even an hour before,

I would have said yes, I love you 

In a quiet way

The way I love you is tender and loyal

Open to your humanness and imperfections

Not looking for you to inspire great moments

Just true embraces and small acts of kindness

In the moment that I disappointed you

Flames on a match 

Thrown on a pile of wood you had already stacked

High and sprinkled with gasoline

For just the right moment to tell me 

What you really think

I felt it unfair to not prepare me with a 

Small glass of water 

Or a chance to speak in between your sentences

Because isn’t that what real conversation is?

A back and forth 

Where two souls share thoughts and opinions

Each equally allowed moments

To digress

On opinions shared? 

Yet you spoke to me as if 

I was just meant to listen while you beat your chest

And told me everything I’ve already known

As if I am a child and you are a man

Whilst I wonder if being a man is a great feet

If earning it doesn’t mean 

Learning how to be slow and kind

In the face of challenge which comes from

Bedding a woman who learned to love you in your indifference

Consequence a word placed in each pause

As I finally thought to share with you

My affection,

Answered not in your kind nature

Which I once considered
Gentle as the constance of the sea

Beating across the soft sands of the coast

Begging me to flee to its depths

And instead in the moment 

When my peace mattered more than yours

I found you empty of empathy

And not at all sympathetic to my love

Which made the apology you texted me

Before you fell asleep 

Feel like a shovel full of dirt

Burying a coffin which inside laid 

A withering flower 

Buried before its very death

As it happened to realize 

The sun it thought to be shining on it 

Was actually just a lamp bored in rejection

And longing 

A light bulb with a timestamp

Though the flower, my heart,

Never stopped being kind in the dark

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