Vagabond

Jonathan Valania

August 22nd, 2018


Your lease was up.

You asked if you could stay a while.

I smiled—

said sure.


But I didn’t want this.

I just couldn’t be the reason

you had nowhere to go.


And once you stayed,

I couldn’t fail.

Not without becoming

every man you said

was violent,

lazy,

abusive,

a rapist.


Last week,

you screamed at me

for not defending you—

after you called my best friend a bitch.

You refused to apologize.


And still,

he was the problem.


Was he?

I don’t know anymore.


But I couldn’t make you leave.

I wouldn’t survive that version of myself.


You gave a lot—

but you took more.


Still,

I stayed.


Because failing

would make me

just like the others.

 

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Letters I'll Never Send

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