I wish I could ask you.
What did you see in me?
That said I was the one,
from across the room.
Was it my wide eyes
or perhaps my cautious laugh?
Was it something I did?
The way I carried myself
through the world, perhaps.
Unsure and alone,
yet full of youthful determination.
I wonder, for hours at a time.
Even to this day,
though long since remade,
what quality I had
that whispered the words:
I could be yours.
And I wish I knew,
after all these years.
If you still think of me.
In small moments of forgotten shame.
A tinge of pain,
for the mistakes of the past.
Because I think of you.
I still feel the fear in my gut.
Bought by the sound of stiff shoes,
outside a bathroom stall.
Pacing. Restless. Frustrated.
As I pull my feet up onto the seat.
I hear the sound of your breath,
shallow and angry,
searching for your prey.
Time and time again,
in a stranger on the train.
Forever just out of sight.
I lay in bed, in the early hours,
curtains drawn so tightly.
Blinded by your headlights.
As you corner me again,
in that dark car park,
with your gifts and your wants.
Did punishment ever find you?
Or are you still free?
The disheveled, twisted thing,
years later, on wet pavement,
when I bit my tongue
and crossed the street.
All those days since past.
Yet I still carry your sins.
A burden chained within me,
the key long lost or discarded.
By people who never cared
enough to see it in me.