it was never my responsibility.

Photo by Luis Quintero on Unsplash

i told myself that i should have known better and

i told myself that i could have waited longer and

i told myself that i was asking for too much and

i told myself that i wasn’t patient enough.

but now, i tell myself he was a boy who could only

love me in languages he understood, and eternity was

not a word he knew how to pronounce. i tell myself that

people only grow if they want to, and i tell myself

that his inability to learn how to love me

healthily was not my fault. it was never

my responsibility to teach him that

punches and blows are not

synonymous with

xs and os.

☽