I HOPE YOU NEVER UNDERSTAND THIS POEM

I hope you never understand this poem.

Not completely.

You may recognise the details,

find yourself beneath the altered facts,

hear your own sentences

returned in another voice.

That is not understanding.

Understanding would require

something you saved for years

to happen without you.

Someone would have to know

exactly why it mattered

and proceed anyway.

You would need to watch

from too far away,

close enough to see the change,

close enough to be thanked for watching,

unable to place your hands

inside the memory.

Afterward, they would tell you

there will be other moments.

They would explain

that nothing was taken from you

because the choice was always theirs.

Both things would be true.

Neither would help.

You would try to describe

what had disappeared.

People would keep naming

the visible thing.

You would say no,

not that,

the place I believed

I held inside the moment.

They would tell you

the pain will pass.

Then you would understand

why forgiveness sounds like a second demand.

Why explanation becomes unbearable

when the person already understood.

Why the mind keeps returning

to the instant before it happened,

still searching for one sentence

that could have delayed the irreversible.

Part of me wants this for you.

I want recognition

with a cost attached.

I want you to reach the final line

without needing me

to explain what it means.

But another part remembers

who you were

before I learned this pain from you.

That part still cannot wish

the lesson upon anyone.

So I hope you read this

and misunderstand it.

I hope you call it anger,

exaggeration,

a poet making grief larger

to make the ending land.

I hope you never discover

how accurate it is.

I hope you never understand this poem.

I hate that nothing else

would convince me that you do.