Preparing for my latest embarrassment

(the calm before the rejection; also - why our friendship has a hole in it)

either I’m disingenuously naive
or superstitious
or fatally me,

pretending honesty isn’t my fault
that ignorance of your mindset isn’t my fault
spoiled by innocence, expecting too much of
grace. Just like a poet.

oh me
falling victim to the
memory of her honesty
again
expecting someone else to love honesty
as much as she

expecting ‘I like you’ not
to become
‘I freak you out’
just another sweet dismissal, or
fodder for an elegant epistle
planting seeds for the
bittersweet reversal, ie
years from now
when you look at me with big eyes
but all I hear are echoes of
my honest mistake and
your stupid pride
and then my stupid mistake:
my wounded dishonest pride begrudging
your self-inflated, knee-jerk
retreat; you so ignorant
of all that's stillborn
and me painfully aware of what never was and
we both teased by what
could have been sweet.