The Only Thing I Don’t Understand

Honestly, I try to understand you.
I really try.

I talk to my pillow, I talk to the gods, I talk to myself.

I turn you around in my head from every angle I can reach,
as if effort alone could make a person clearer.

And what I keep landing on is simple, and it makes me mad:

I don’t understand you.

Not because you’re evil,
not because you’re playing games,
not because you’re trying to twist me into confusion.

I don’t think you’re manipulative.
I don’t think you’re cruel.
I don’t even think you mean to hurt anyone.

That’s what makes it worse.

Because you do things that don’t add up to me,
you say things and then move in a direction that... my mind cannot predict.

And you do it so naturally like this is just how you’ve always existed.

And I know it is.

That’s the magical part of you, your vivid randomness, your movement,
how you go places and collect life
like it’s light on your skin.

But I don’t get it.
I don’t understand where it comes from.

I’ve always been good at understanding people.
I’ve been proud of it, honestly.
I can usually trace the line from feeling to action,
from intention to decision,
from silence to what it’s hiding.

With you, I can’t.

So I try harder.

I look at timing, distance, patterns,
I search for some explanation
that will make you make sense,
something that will let my brain rest.

And instead, I keep finding myself.

I keep finding my own emotions,
my own need for clarity,
the places in me that want to feel secure,
the places I avoid because I already know them too well.

I didn’t want to be looking at me.
I wanted to understand you.

And still I don’t.

It’s frustrating,
because you’re close—so close—
close enough that I feel the shape of you,
close enough that I want to dive into your thoughts
and come back saying, oh, there you are.

Because I see value in you.
In your mind, in your way of being,
in how you see the world,
in how you speak, in how you exist.

And that’s why this doesn’t feel like rejection.
It doesn’t even feel like betrayal.

It feels like standing in front of a door
that never fully closes,
but never fully opens either.

And I keep trying to be fair to you,
to hold you in a good light,
to tell myself: this is just how they are,
they’re not doing wrong,
they’re not trying to hurt me.

I tell myself all of that.

And I believe it.

But I still don’t understand you.

I don’t understand how something can feel so real
and still feel so unclear.
I don’t understand how I can feel so close
and still not know what I’m standing inside.

And maybe that’s the truth I’m stuck with,
not peace, not closure, not a clean ending,

Just this:

I don’t understand you,
even when I try my hardest to.

And I think the most honest part is…

I’m still here,
holding the confusion carefully,
because I can’t turn it into something ugly,
even when it hurts.

Because you are gentle with the world.
Soft in the way you move through it.

And I see that.
I see you.

So how could I turn away
from someone like you?

How could I break you down
just to make you make sense?

I understand every explanation
I can invent.

I understand everything, I swear.

The only thing I don’t understand

is you.

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