Red

It is not as if,
I could never trust you again.
It is that I could never trust,
the part of myself that would.
I always believed in a version
of you that was a bit better,
it was, I thought, generosity,
a choice to see your best self,
and then you made it stupid.

No.
You didn't make my trust stupid.
That's not fair. I was just stupid;
that's Red's correction, here. I
must own the stupidity of believing
something so fucking delusional,
but doing it all over again, that
would be an invitation.

Red will never again allow it,
such foolishness, willful blindness.
I see now that you were always
the one who is before me.
The mirror is broken, and I
am the better for it. I've explored
the corpse, the skeleton of it
having been revealed, the contorted
bones that always were the
armature upon which I hung
my hopes, desires, those
were the fleshy bits upon which
the hagfish fed. Nothing so
insubstantial remains.

I believed. In the good intentions,
of others. Thanks to you, I now
know better. Never again.
Red will be the gatekeeper.