Poem: I Should Have Demanded It from You

I Should Have Demanded It from You

Reminded you of your own words,
of promises volunteered,
of the way things had been already.
I should have been bold
and not accepted it.
Maybe it would be different,
maybe it would have changed things.
I cannot be certain, of course,
cannot even say what would have happened.
Maybe you would have hurt me even worse,
would have responded with cruelty.
I do not know.  It is not impossible.
Maybe it would not have changed things,
would not have led to a different outcome,
but I think I might feel a bit better about it,
just making sure you understood 
what you had done to me, I think that
would have, itself, mattered,
even if nothing else were different.
But, it is easy to think that, now,
all these years later
when there is no way
to say anything about it
and no chance of those promises
ever being kept/

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