There’s a moment irresistible
when you find yourself alone,
to imagine those within your life
as you would have them be.

Not for perfect, self-made wants,
but for finding soulful closure
on conflicts of the past
that will never be revisited.

When honesty demands you cast
aside imagination’s skew
you run your fingers over
the rough wall now facing you:

it must have been there all along,
but you managed not to see;
to touch it now scrapes your hands
as you search to find an edge.

But, edge it hasn’t, nor visible top,
and as time presses in from behind,
you realize if you need room to breathe
you’ll have to turn another way

Else be compressed against this wall
by the shrinking of belief
as others pass you by
and light fades to frigid neutrals.

There are not arms to hold you here,
are not and never were,
to imagine other than what is
will not help you solve the problem:

it will not make this gravel side
into comfort or protection—
it will not produce from the other side
a heart unnatural to the substance.

By crushing here in determination
you do not harm the wall.
You scrape your skin and bruise your knees;
it will be your own fault

if you do not make the choice
to change now that you have seen
the object you mistook for love
is hard, and cold, and stained.

So turn away, take a breath,
mop up your weary limbs;
do for yourself what that other won’t
and release expectation grown thin.

There will be other roads to walk,
and other companions to meet
who carry their own scrapes and scruffs,
who have grown to understand

you cannot replace the hearts of others
with wishful kind improvement—
you must learn to see them as they are
and see yourself back through them.

-

There’s a fundamental lack of understanding that goes along with finding yourself against that wall. Even when you know rationally that there is a person who doesn’t care—who, if they knew a particular action would hurt you, would take it specifically so—you still find that instinct urges you to explain, to expect understanding and consideration, before thought has caught up to remind you it’s useless. The feelings have not yet on the level of belief accepted what the mind knows, whether the reason is simple habit (from hoping so long for better from that person) or more real incomprehension.