the bribery of destruction

You instruct me to treat you

by how you treat me.

You say it is good

for my leaving.

For what you do to me

is seen as appropriate

and what I do to you back,

is seen as insulting.

It proves that we are not to be.

This is suppose to enroll me

in the inevitable failure of us

because it is predictably so.

There is hard evidence,

everywhere in the past,

a trail of repeated tit for tat blunders

that automatically go with the territory.

I am supposed to disappoint you.

Your search for perfection goes on.

I am supposed to leave,

to willingly leave.

I should have all the reasons

that you have provided for me,

all your interpretations that help me

to see what is

that you claim is so.

It is I who should leave you,

as a way of you leaving me.

It should look obvious

as to what I should do.

I should fail you,

fail your tests,

fail your questions

that do not answer

to your emotionally charged needs

at that time.

In most obvious ways,

I am living the results

as a disappointment to you.

But really I am not to look at

how you have failed me

in those less revealed ways

that you have pointed out to me

as remarks that I have made

or to that effect,

which only more deeply wounded you.

Remarks that you must contentiously

be in response to

when you emotionally inform me

of your feelings

on the paraphrased subject at hand.

We should make a pact about this.

And then you can call me later,

in our separate lives.

And then you befriend me,

and feel solid and justified.

“It was the right thing,”

you would say.

And we shall be living proof,

after the fact.

Just like all the rest of them,

those other previous relationships

that stand aside for you to proceed

with your storied account

and your life-after caring methods.

And I should be happy

that this is so

and that I have this account

for my change of circumstance,

because we have grown

so much the wiser

for having handled all of this,

as our maturity

would have obviously produced.

I should now be the free spirit

and yawn at the fullness

now waiting before me.

I should know that

you are mad at yourself

for having gotten into this mess,

enough for the both of us,

in accepting as fact and or karma.

I should return to my burdenless life.

These are all your instructions

you leave for me,

as leaving me,

as handing me my script,

as I follow your interpretive lead.

And then where do I go

so responsively wrong

as to have you set me so right?

It must be a blessing to have meet me

with your buried but unceasing rage.

It must be auspicious for me

that you came along

and took me in

when I was so down,

as to see you as some sort of light,

an angelic light.

“Home to me”

as I would find myself secretly responding.

How could I have seen so much

in someone who privately

and internally claims for herself,

no loudly demands for herself,

so little,

and nothing from me?

Is our secret shared agenda:

‘the ultimate abuse of power

is to spend one’s life

actively avoiding its lessons?’

Is this the bribery of destruction?