Forgotten

"Do you see how much you've broken her?
Do you even see how much she's shattered?"
You scream the accusations
As you fling a hand towards me.
With a growl I've never heard,
You reach for me,
"You've never deserved her."

I knew -
Knew that you hated it
Knew that you hated him,
But I hadn't expected this.
You'd always check in
Asking about the ways that I
Purposefully
Hurt myself,
And you'd always ask if he'd noticed...
The answer always no.
And I knew that it drove you crazy:
What I was doing to myself
The fact that you were too far away to stop it,
That I was with him,
And that he didn't care enough to notice.
But I never could have guessed this,
That it was eating at you
Until you became raw enough
To hurl the venom you'd been forced to swallow
Back at the man directly responsible.

And they say you can't love someone
Until you love yourself,
But you,
Loving you,
When I hated myself enough to inflict
Intentional pain,
You were a reason to hate myself a little less -
Because there was someone that cared
Someone that gave a damn
Someone that would hold the tide back
As I scooped up the shattered pieces
Of my broken heart and soul.
And if that's not love
Love enough for those bits and pieces
Of my shattered self to want to mend
And be whole for you,
I don't know what is.