If there is anything I wish I could show you
from that fateful Friday night
when we shared too many drinks
and way too many words
for something not actually happening,
it’s how bewitching your smile became
through the silent stretches
of lingering eye contact,
how that set ablaze the alcohol in my system,
how I was erupting
the longer we stayed in that gypsy meltdown until
he, the coworker driving you home,
said it was time to go.

It took me way too long to realize
that was the only night
you didn’t immediately reply
when I texted I was home safe.

I wish you could have shared in my confusion
from a road dead-ending without warning,
how it had me questioning reality
until I asked you aside
begging for clarity
in respectful discussions of human emotion.
But you would later claim I assumed
sexual favors were owed me after that Friday
as if it wasn’t you who singled me out in conversation,
as if it wasn’t you who began to smile and flirt,
as if it wasn’t you who drew me the map I followed.

I wish that your reason for breaking promises
that may have never existed from the start
wasn’t because I was too nice of a person to date,
that such a line didn’t come on the heels
of a viral discourse of men versus bears,
that my resolve to not be that guy society (not unfairly) complains about,
paired with those suggested efforts to dress better
and work out toxic behaviors
didn’t land me in the same discouragingly defeated place–
not that dating is a vending machine one puts coins into,
but I shouldn’t have come out of this worse than a bear.

I wish
that you instead
had told me
about him,
that
my sense of self-worth
never had to be challenged
again,
that
I could have found a way
to handle myself
better
when the truth came out

because the problem isn’t so much the anger
but that all the surrounding emotions
are flammable.

I said something I shouldn’t have
when trying to dress my woundedness.
It wasn’t supposed to get back to you.
If it’s enough to make me that guy, 
then I truly am sorry.

I just want people to be better.
I want people to be more accountable,
maybe a society that takes a step back
from men-are-always-wrong narratives.

I want to feel like I belong,
like happiness and contentment
are still goals I can reach,
like it wasn’t a wrong decision
nurturing a desire to be good,
like I can be human
and stumble every so often,

like I can be forgiven.