How Could I Have Known? (written on 1-23-1974)

How could I have known
when I gave my love so freely
and put my trust in one so completely
that someday, one day, my love,
my heart, would be thrown back in my face.
Though that one was kind
and did his utmost to make me understand.
Sometimes, even now,
I can’t help feeling, I can’t help wishing
that I had it to live again.
But this time, I would do it right.
I would not be so quick to fall in love
or to let him see me when my shield was not up.
I trusted him so completely that I let him
get closer to understanding “me”
or let him think that he did,
than anybody else has ever been.
I opened up for him so much more
than he ever opened up for me.
It was so important to me
that he should “know” me.
I never really “knew” him.
If I did, I probably would have foreseen this
and would have at least been prepared.
I still love him,
though that love is closed up in a box
that will probably never be opened up again,
and I guess I always will.
For if you really love somebody,
you never stop loving that person
(even if you are not conscious of that love).
He was my first love,
but he will not by a long run be my last.
The rose may have withered a little,
but it didn’t die.
And someday, it will be in bloom
to live forever.

So He Says He Wants Me Back (written on 5-1-1974)

So he says he wants me back – he that threw me over
with his apparently good intentions.
Well, I had understood. We were getting too serious too fast.
And it had to come to an end sometime,
and better sooner than later.
Well, now he claims he still loves me,
and he has been “watchfully waiting” all this time.
I think he wants to take up where we left off
without the previous ties.
Or at least his present actions show me that.
He tried thrice to get me to kiss him,
but I withheld.
I suppose he hoped he would awake in me
that once felt love.
He begged me to once again let him hold
the beautiful woman he had once loved.
But as I sat stiffly in his farms,
I could reawake no feeling for him.
I felt so sorry for him.
But then again, I felt sort of victorious.
For when he broke up with me,
I had begged him (in my mind)
to take me back,
to . . . love me.
And now, he’s begging me.
It’s just like we were two different people now.
I have changed so much
since the time we were “together.”
I am up here in my own little world.
And though he knocks very loudly,
and even if I try to open it – I can’t,
for it is locked from the outside.
He could have opened it, but . . .
In the action of having thrown me over,
the key flew out of his hands.
If he had not lost the key long ago,
then maybe he could have changed with me.
But it is too late for him.
I told him, “I’d think about it.”
Well, I did.
But even IF I wanted to give him
back the key (to my heart)
I couldn’t . . . for . . .
It is being possessed by another.