Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash
Call It By Its Name
You can fool yourself
if that’s what you need—
but please,
don’t lay it on me.
Your need for space—
if it came with honesty,
if you could name and reflect on it—
wasn’t about time to process.
To me,
it felt like a quiet slipping away.
Call it detachment.
Call it fear.
Call it what it is,
and I will gracefully accept its name.
My bids for connection,
my attempts to return
to what once resonated so well between us,
have crossed a line for you.
I am sad our eyes no longer meet—
a “hi” or a “hello”
no longer crosses our lips.
We now avoid each other.
I didn’t know
our friendship was so fragile,
that my need for transparency
could shake its walls.
I didn’t anticipate
how my openness
would land as intrusion,
as something you never wanted to hear.
You looked at me
with different eyes
than how I stood before you.
You felt things
I did not mean to stir—
not knowingly.
You had eyes to see,
and a heart, once open, to feel.
What dimmed that light?
What turned me
into someone to protect yourself from?
I never asked
for anything you couldn’t give.
I showed up
with the hope
we could stay open
a little longer.
So if you needed silence,
needed distance—
I understand.
Just don’t ask me
to pretend it was something else.
Call it by its name.
And I will hear you.