After You This Morning Poem by Anna Moriarty Lev

i should have run out the door after you this morning
and with the cold pavement pressed under my summer feet i should have kissed you,
good.
not to keep you, no -

the 'i love yous' i kept from you
why did i keep them?
what good are they to me
but to make me sick
tearing the lining from my stomach
with their biting.
they are not mine to keep.

it was my pride stopping the mouth that loves you,
loves your hair and eyes and that sort of smile that steals your face,
like the froth of cold ocean,
what is pride to do that?

it is nothing. and i wish i'd told you.

we can all think of the perfect way to end things
while they're not actually ending. tide in the morning.
during the end we're too lost
and keeping our pride or trying
to seem something
that we pass by the real truth of it,
which is sort of beautiful. an end

and then we regret things.