I’ve spent too much time thinking of might-have-beens, of the garden of forking paths, of the paths forever barred to me
is it a sign that I’m getting old, always looking backward instead of forward, or a sign that I’m still too immature for my age, unwilling to plan for the future, and wallowing in my broken dreams?

you would think what had ruined me was her brazen faithlessness, the breaking of promises that didn’t really mean much, sworn before we knew what the words really meant

but it wasn’t her
it was she who came after, when I thought I really knew what love meant
when I put all my cards on the table on that drear afternoon under autumnal clouds
and I wasn’t met with ridicule or revulsion
but kindness, generosity, and true friendship
transcending my petty misapprehensions, my false pretenses, of greater things that I will perhaps never understand
of things I will never learn from experience

so it wasn’t the deep melancholy of knowing that something could never be that ruined me
it was the grace that I received that, as the years go by, I feel ever more unworthy of
for what can I ever know of love, if I still haven’t learned what true friendship is?