Three Days Too Late

Three days after we ended,
I think I finally understand the wall.

Well, three days and 13+ years, but who’s counting?

I spent years believing
it stood between us.

It did stand between us.

A small part of me,
one I didn’t acknowledge
nor listen to,
must have hoped

if I was patient enough,
safe enough,
loved enough,
known long enough,
you might someday
let it fall.

I thought the depth of us
should have made it unnecessary.

All those years.
All those words.
All the pieces of ourselves
we placed into each other’s hands.

The laughter.
The wanting.
The tenderness.
The impossible honesty.

The things we whispered
into the dark because somehow
the dark made them easier to say.

I knew you
in ways that still
take my breath away.

And you knew me.

So I never understood
why the wall remained.

Until it was too late.

Maybe the wall
was never there
to keep me out.

Maybe it was there
so you could let me in.

Maybe you needed
the edges of what we were
to stay exactly where they were
so that inside them
you could be real with me.

So you could open doors
you kept closed elsewhere.

So you could wander
as far into us
as you did
without losing your way home.

And maybe
the deeper we became,
the more necessary
those edges were.

God, I wish I had understood that.

I wish I hadn’t mistaken
the wall
for the measure
of what I meant to you.

I wish I’d known
that perhaps
it wasn’t evidence
of how little
you were willing to give,

but the thing
that made it possible
for you to give me
everything you did.

It wouldn’t have changed
what I wanted.

That’s the sorrow
inside the understanding.

I still would have wanted
one step farther.

Not everything.

Just enough
to let the friendship
that lived between us
be as real in the world
as it felt when it was only ours.

And perhaps
that was the one thing
you could never give me.

Not because
what we had wasn’t real.

Maybe because
it was.

And it still hurt
to know you couldn’t
take that step with me.

So here I am,
of course too late,
finally understanding
the thing I fought
for so long.

The wall I thought
kept you from
being fully real with me

may have been
the very thing
that allowed you
to be real with me
at all.

I still wish
we could have found a way.

But I think I understand now.
At least,
as much as I can
without you here
to tell me.

And somehow
that understanding
leaves less room
for anger

and so much more
for love.

I only wish
the understanding
had arrived before goodbye.