I Do Not Hate You Except Because I Love You Poem by Christopher McInnes

I do not hate you except because I love you –
I go from the heights of love
to the depths of hate and back
in an instant, my head drained of blood,
and the violence of the swings destroys me.

Your voice lifted me up so high
I had to close my eyes (because I cannot fly)
and trust to you to be my wings,
and in taking me up you were so close, so close, to me
I burned with the heat of your stardom.

And just because you were so close to me,
I made the mistake of opening my eyes
and looking into yours – and I saw only loveliness,
not love, nor affection nor even tolerant regard,
and what I had thought to be twin suns in your eyes there,
turned out to be cold reflections of a distant sky
in a pool of jet-black stillness,
and my burning heart plunged into the coldness of it,
and I drowned and then exploded
in a billion crystal tears.

So now I am a jigsaw man,
a reassembled kaleidoscope of glass,
refracting your ersatz starlight in scintillas of emotion,
blinking on and off,
love and hate, love and hate, love and hate, love and hate.

But the end of the story is more of a monochrome,
because eventually the tears will flow again
and cover the dark bits, the joins between the pieces,
and reflect the light where there would otherwise be dark,
so in my final days, there will be just light – and love –
even if it’s broken.

(With acknowledgments to Pablo Neruda, Sonnet 66)