the quarry I made of u

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I loved all the unglamorous particulars of you

before you knew they were lovable,

and then you learned,

from me,

that they were —

and brought that knowledge

to someone else’s door

like a gift

you had stolen

from a house

you had already left.

And now, she gets the version of you

that I assembled from wreckage.

She gets the softness

I excavated

with bare, bleeding hands

from under all that marble.

She gets the open hands

I pried apart,

finger by finger,

from all that clenching.

And she gets the laugh that

I coaxed out of your chest

like a splinter,

slowly, carefully,

the way you pull something sharp

from somewhere tender —

and she will never know

what it cost to make you laughable

to yourself.

I taught you that.

That you were allowed

to be

ungathered.

And I hate that I did.

Did I make you love me,

or did I make you lovable

and watch you fall in love

with the new reflection?

(I have spent considerable,

ruinous time

learning the difference.)

You didn’t love me.

You loved what I saw in you

when I looked.

And when I stopped —

when I couldn’t anymore, when I was

too hollowed out to keep

the vigil —

you simply found

another pair of eyes.

And she looks at you

the way I taught you

to want to be looked at.

I barely tried,

and that is the worst of it.

Not that I tried and failed.

But that loving you

was the most effortless and ruinous thing —

both, simultaneously, without contradiction —

that I have ever done.

I barely tried

and you were cracked open

like good earth

after the first hard rain.

And I stood there thinking I didn’t even mean to, which is the only thing more devastating than meaning to.

So go.

Go be the thing

I uncovered.

Be soft.

Be knowable.

Be all the gorgeous, specific,

previously-inaccessible parts of yourself

that I pulled into daylight

with both hands, bleeding.

But know —

in the marrow-deep place,

that there was a woman

who loved all the unglamorous particulars of you

before you knew they were worth loving.

And she is standing

in the quarry

you left behind,

holding the chisel,

wondering why

the thing she made

never once

looked back.