you once said to me,
          "you have more talent in one finger
            than most do in their whole bodies,"

                 you told me i dance "mystifying" and

         called me "complex" as though it were a compliment.

                   you said i could
                   make anyone laugh

                   you told me you loved my pictures,
                   my poems, my songs,
                   and "everything [i] do"

                   you turned my words back on me, saying
                   "you said it's in the eye of the beholder,
                   and now you know the basics of what i think of you,"

     you called me divine and interesting
     and said you'd spend as long as it takes
     to find out what makes me so very me

     you once told me to trust
     that people don't spend their days
     thinking of ways to hurt me,
     they just spend their days
     thinking of me

                                               but now you don't tell me
                                               anything at all.