You are so mean. but only sometimes, like when you’re scared. or when you’re worried. and then instead of letting me know, in tears or in words you just take my hands and twist them and twist them into dirt, crumbling falling, inside outside, and it hurts it hurts. you are so mean. but then you make me smile. Smile so hard and fast and suddenly that i forget. forget that you made my hands disappear, that my finger nails, once so long and pretty turned black and fell hard, crashing like one-hundred thirty-four and a half pounds into the ground. I forget, that i hated you for your cruel words, i forget that i promised myself i would walk away from you. but then im standing there, smiling smiling smiling and you are smiling back at me. because you see my soul, read my mind, say my words before even i can. and yet still you manage to grind me down. how how how can you see me for what i am, darkened insides cheery outsides, maybe somedays the reverse and yet allow yourself to be so spiteful? And then there might be this other side. late at night after the movie is over and the lights shut off, we sit breathing, opposite sides of the couch, and out of that comes a story. one that makes me love you. but not like a lover, not like you might take me in your hands. no, no, not like that at all. and not like a mother, not like you must care for me, watch me, protect me from others, try to preserve my innocence. no, no, not like that at all. more like, one story that makes me love you, love you like, i see, i see what you are and i see that you are mean and i see that you are spiteful and i see when my hands turn into dust from all that wringing you are doing, i see that. all of it. and then i see your eyes, wide with your anticipation for my thoughts, perhaps you will criticize my thoughts and yet i give them to you to do what you might with them, and i am cringing, hoping for approval though i do not want to want it. So i am seeing your eyes, waiting prepared and silent with all that dirty dirty past in them and then i look closer and closer from my far away seat across the couch. i look and catch sight of a flash, that you glimpse me seeing you seeing me catching sight of you seeing me. and i smile again and say, “I love you.”