Reflections on a Broken Relationship

Our friendship was based on therapy sessions.
While you nodded away and smiled,
resting your hand on my shoulder when I cried,
manipulating me because you liked the control
you had over my every sob and epiphany,
I rested my hands between my legs, wondering
what it would feel like to have a sensitive
doctor probe me after session hours.

Here was our basic formula, set up by a simple equation:
I have a bad day, you lend your shoulder to cry on
and encourage me to explore myself, to truly
understand what makes me tick and chime.
I promised you sweet peas as payment for all
you had done. I promised to give you the
blissful pleasure that can only be called love.

But the sessions weren’t enough. While I waited
to be analyzed once more, you encouraged me to
explore some more, to look deeper into the hearts
of other men, for surely someone out there was
better than the sympathetic shrink? I thought not,
but in my mind formed a chant, encouraging me to
live my life like never before, to let go of my fears
and truly live my life for me.

So I did… and I got hurt.
Turns out I’m still new in the ways of men.

Now, here I am, waiting for the doctor to
fix me again. But the doctor’s not in:
he’s nursing his wounds in someone else’s
basement, wondering what went wrong
and why he couldn’t have saved me.
At least, that’s what I tell myself, while his
outbox piles up with messages asking
for me to find another therapist;
he’s done with me.

But Doc, I am a good person, with flaws
and cracks and my own regrets. You say that
you’d rather not have a patient who makes
my kind of mistakes. I’d rather not have a lover,
who’s too busy playing God to understand
what it means to be human.