The Introvert

Darling— You strung together useless trinkets of imagination, And pinned me up inside your head. With dreams that stalked me across the night, But were too big to drag out of bed. You clung to the savior you rashly mistook in me, Like a lover clings to her dead. When I never meant a single word, Of whatever I might have said. Verily, I wasn’t rummaging for anything at all; I certainly wouldn’t have begun in you. The god you saw, I have seen, as well, But only in the self I pursue. And so I rose from shards of the mirror, And snatched away from your fussy little hand. For as I slept beside you, I slept nonetheless alone, In a dream you could never understand. I never used you because you were useless, Never belonged to you because I don’t belong. Couldn’t fulfill my emptiness with your own, And could only pretend for so long. But now I can’t gouge you out from within me, From a place that never was there. From a bottomless, unquenched solitude, In which you simply could not fare. What you wanted to see wasn’t in me; I can’t give you what you think you need. We’re ever alone, yet we try to outnumber our loneliness, When in turning inward, we are freed.