My Vulnerability Has A Guilty Conscience

~

Sometimes,
I don’t want to know
your pain, your sadness, your anger
for the fear that I may have to share mine
like an obligation shared between humans

I try to separate the two:
the giving and receiving of thoughts and emotions
and I feel I never can 
so I learn to hide my pain, sadness, anger when I narrate it

when I pause to investigate my fear
it is not the sharing that scares me
but the slight possibility of scarring you with my story
that I may resent it later
if I ever laid out my darkness on the ground

so I let it stay up in the sky
let my sadness absorb the moonshine
and the stars decorate my secret 
as I tell you my tale
with little detail to how I feel
and vivid descriptions of what happened to me

so that— when sometimes you do choose
to share your pain, sadness or anger with me
I can keep you company
without feeling like a burden you will have to carry

~