If You Love Me

If You Love Me You Hate Me

By Roy D. Follendore III

October 17, 2005

If you love me

then you hate me.

I must not go to that place,

but not because it is far too late,

or because I have another image

of who we otherwise might be.

This is my only true image,

the only image

that I own.

It's the reflection of creativity,

of dreams and fantasies,

and of giant oaks chained

to the melody of weeping willow trees.

You may now examine it more carefully if you wish,

but only if you truly wish to know me,

to understand that even the weight of light

on its dark branches might be far too much to bare.

These are my tangled branches, confused and weak,

too weak to carry a less tranquil vision of we.

So if you were to love me more

then you must hate me more.

I therefore must remain fixed and distant,

nested within this long adored place,

so that I may simply exist.

.