should’ve stopped at seven..!

i: lust
you couldn’t wait, you couldn’t understand,
and so you talked me from indecision into action
into regret into wounds that have now healed
for the most part, but have the rather nasty habit
of re-opening with alarming frequency.

ii: gluttony
i gorged myself on hope and pathetic dreams,
on my painfully innocent belief in you and me,
in a future that ended neither in dead ends nor
in cliffs that waited so patiently, time after time,
to dash me onto the rocks below.

iii: greed
i don’t think you really wanted me, no matter
how close i came to deluding myself,
but all the same you wanted what i had to offer,
and in the end you wanted it enough
to tug on your puppeteer’s strings
and play me like the fool i had been for far too long
and would be once again.

iv: sloth
you spoke far from infrequently of how terrible a person
you were, and yet in my experience you didn’t do nearly
enough to change it; i, meanwhile, spoke far too frequently
of how terrible you were for me, and for far too long
i did nothing to change that.

v: wrath
what i should’ve felt in the years gone past
has finally caught up to me, a rage like clashing swords
in my head, and i want to hurt you, and i want you
to suffer at least as much misery as you have
put me through; i want you to change, i want you
to become a better person, but oh, make no mistake,
i also want you to hurt.

vi: envy
you have always seemed less affected
by this disaster of pathetic proportions than i have,
and only in this way do i wish i were remotely like you.

vii: pride
i could have said this all to you, but that would require
approaching you, and after all that has been said
and done, after all the times i should have spoken up
but didn’t, and all the promises of distance
that i broke again and again, this time
i am sure: i am never going near you again.