I didn’t want to break up with you
over a poem,
the truth is
I could not get these words past my mouth.
It’s not you. It’s not me.
It’s the place we’ve reached
where the road runs out.
When you touched me, I felt continents
shift into place — a country I never earned
until your arms carried me home.
You gave me safety like a man
who had never known it himself.
That mercy was real. I carry its heat.
But mercy cannot pay rent.
Mercy cannot keep the lights on
or quiet the landlord’s fist at dawn.
I hate the Catholic girl who lives in me.
She was raised on roofs that did not leak,
on dinners that did not arrive by miracle
or last dollar.
I loved your stories—
the luminous strangers you collected between disasters,
the way every press credential was a boarding pass
to somewhere no one had planned for.
Every tale ended the same:
another motel, another borrowed tank of gas,
your last dollar spent arriving somewhere.
I didn’t notice how often that dollar was mine,
or borrowed from tomorrow.
I wanted so badly for the velocity of falling
to be destiny.
You learned the exact shape of the love I warned you I needed—
my silences, my noises, the particular way I flinch—
and you stayed anyway.
I didn’t want to break up with you.
The poem arrived first.
I cannot be your friend right now—
not while the wound is this fresh,
not while your voice would unmake me.
When I’m stronger—
maybe colder—
I may reach for whatever remains.
Until then, give me the quiet.
I cannot bear your crying—
not because it doesn’t move me
but because it does.
I cannot swear my heart doesn’t love you—
that would be the only real lie here.
You taught me how to be loved safely.
You could not teach me
how to build a life safely.
I am not yet strong enough
to carry both of us through.
My own life is already a half-finished scaffold,
swaying downtown in the wind.
We come from different centuries.
I’m sorry I cannot be the one
who fixes what first broke in you.
I didn’t want to break up with you
over a poem—
but it was the only room left
where I could say it.
Thank you for the safety.
The bruise is mine now.
I will learn to walk without leaning.
s.g.
xo,
Sheridan Guerrette
The Official Poetry Collection of WSS
