All So You Never Had to Look

My whole life with you
has been a slow, careful sidestep.
A choreography of deflection,
so precise it almost looked like grace.

Every move—
a calculated dodge
of responsibility.
Every word—
a shield against truth.

You never held your failures.
You handed them out like curses.
Gaslighted,
ridiculed,
undermined—
whoever was closest
when the mirror got too loud.

You didn’t care who you hurt.
You didn’t even pause.
Because hurting meant distance
from the one thing you couldn’t face:
your own reflection.

and now—
the one you poured yourself into,
loved, but dismantled—
is a ruin of your making.
a monument to what’s left
when something is built
only to break.

But still—
you refuse to look.

Still, you say,
“It wasn’t me.”
Still, you pull new names
into the fire
just to feel a little less cold
in the absence of your own accountability.

You have made a life
out of misdirection.
Out of smoke and silence.
Out of rewriting pain
to keep your conscience clean.

But I see it.
I see you.

And I will not carry your denial
for one more step.

You ruined so much.
You lied to them.
You damaged me.
And all of it—
all of it—
just so you never had to look in the mirror
and see yourself
as the problem.