POEM: Guilty

Guilty
By Ashley Peng

Trust me
I never meant to hurt you
I thought it was an ordinary rejection.
But you,
You saw me as someone I could never be for you
You weren’t in love with me
You were in love with the idea of me.

How you reacted
Has left me with guilt
That will take forever to be rid of.
How could I have let you down easier?
Could I have been kinder?
More firm?
More honest?
I don’t know what I would have done differently
To change your reaction.

But I know for sure,
You should

Never burden someone as the reason why you don’t know how to love
Because they will spend their whole lives
Thinking that they don’t do anything except hurt people.
It is not their responsibility to teach you how to love
It was the people who were supposed to love you first
The people who gave you life and raised you.

What we had was
Not love.
Not even in the slightest.
It was only an infatuation.

One day,
You will find someone who loves you
But that person will never be me.