masks

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i've been wearing this mask for nine hundred years straight,
and you've never noticed bones collapsing under all that weight,
and i'm not saying
you should've known--should've--done something or at another
but just between us ( two long-time-ago friends: haters and lovers and haters again)
i wore this veneer, this sheer, gauzed-up pain
for you (in principle, in thought, in the ideal main).

but now i want us to start all over again,
to new, to begin
tabula rasa, like that dead philosopher said
(you know, the one who wasn't right in the head)
like how you always said--that it was me: messed-up, nervous, a superlative versioned screw-up.
but i liked you too--
only you never knew the last, the latter,
not given and taken, certainly not presented on your dinner platter.

so, can you blame me for all that i've said? for what i've done?
i never meant it.
none of it.
i just wanted us to be friends, like we were before,
it all became so complicated, so irritated, so more
on my part and less on yours.
or maybe it's just because i don't know how it happened
how one thing ended
and this expanded.

and all i know is that we're not even friends anymore
at this point
and i'm no angel and you're no saint
and i like you and you like her, and she likes someone else.
so how can you hate me for this mask
on my face?
you've got an identical (nearly-close and irremovable) one too.

see, i'm touching its edge right now.

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