When she doesn’t love you,
You know there’s someone better somewhere,
Someone more a man than you can be

She doesn’t think much of you:
She doesn’t feel you everywhere,
The way that you do her, and constantly —

For this is love:
It is an ache,
It is the knowledge that you lack
Whatever all that it might take
And there’s no bringing back
What never was —

When she doesn’t love you,
There is no place for you to hide,
No snowstorm, and no hidden place or vault —

For though fraught with desire,
Sometimes we cannot have the life we want,
And we are left with knowing
Who we aren’t and that it’s all

Our fault

(Originally written in 1989)